


Darkly Deeply Beautifully Blue

by Kiwiin



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: 2027 vs 2038, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Connor pretends to be the RK900, Crime Scenes, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Eventual Romance, Existential Angst, Feelings, Found Family, Friends to Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Humans Are Weird, Jericho (Detroit: Become Human), M/M, Slow Burn, android body horror, androids are gross, borrowed identity, everyone makes poor life decisions, flashbacks for days, red ice task force
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-11-29 08:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18220685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiwiin/pseuds/Kiwiin
Summary: For Connor, it has not been eleven years since 2027. It has been days. His last memory before deactivation was logged on the 28th of December, 2027, at 03:15 AM. His first memory since reactivation was logged on the 6th of November, 2038, at 10:56 PM.It has only been twelve hours and twelve minutes since he woke up. So far, it has been an unpleasant experience.





	1. Carcasses and Wrecks

**Author's Note:**

> It always bothered me that no one ever questioned the very probable link between CyberLife and Red Ice, so this AU came from the idea "what if CyberLife had sent an android in to help the Red Ice Task Force" which then led to "what if that android was Connor" which then led to "what if Connor knew the old Hank and had to deal with getting to know the new Hank a decade later".
> 
> As a warning, we've got dead bodies in this chapter, both human and android, and a few cases of android body horror.
> 
> Everything set in 2038 is chronological. The flashbacks jump around.

_Think’st thou existence doth depend on time?_

_It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine_

_Have made my days and nights imperishable,_

_Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,_

_Innumerable atoms; and one desert,_

_Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,_

_But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,_

_Rocks, and the salt—surf weeds of bitterness._

Lord Byron, “Manfred” Act II Scene I

 

### November 7th, 2038 | 06:45 AM

They find the RK900’s body in the alleyway behind a Laundromatic, half-sprawled out of a broken dryer.

The person responsible had, evidently, originally closed the door to keep him hidden inside, but in the hours since the attack, the weight of him pressed against the glass had slowly pushed the door open. He hadn’t been dragged far; ribbons and clouds of dried thirium cover nearly every visible surface. Connor isn’t sure if the others can detect it as clearly as he can, but for that moment he hopes they can’t. It’s gruesome.

“Fuck,” North says, breaking the silence. Her voice is shaking with an emotion he cannot quantify. He does not yet know her well enough to read the difference between her fury and her distress. It could be both.

There is nothing that can be said, by him or any of the others, to ease the tension.

His thoughts travel to the ST300 receptionist at the DPD who had given Markus the details of the RK900’s expected arrival that day. As a freshly awakened deviant, she’d been excited by the opportunity to help Jericho, but she still had enough compassion for the humans around her - her _colleagues_ \- that she’d chosen to stay in her position, keeping her deviancy a secret in order to keep helping the police. Would she have made that same decision if she’d known what humans were going to do here? Were they going to tell her?

She told them she’d only spoken to the RK900 once. He had seemed pleasant enough. She’d wished them all the best in recruiting him for the cause.

In the back of his mind, the objective to find the RK900 is replaced by a need to analyze and catalogue everything in the area. It’s his old programming coming to the fore, and there’s something undeniably soothing about letting his active mind take a backseat while he processes the scene.

There are potential clues everywhere, but the most obvious place to start is where it all ended.

Connor kneels down beside the machine and, with great care to not jostle the body, presses the heel of his palm against the door’s locking mechanism. The hook is bent curiously out of alignment with the door itself, but a dead android would not have been impetus enough to damage it so badly. He presses the lock in again, frowning as it sluggishly springs back out.

“Looks like someone tried to rip the door open,” comes a voice: Simon’s. He crouches down beside Connor to point out the door’s scratched and battered old handle. “If I had to guess, it would’ve been at least a week ago. They--” he pauses mid-sentence as his LED flickers yellow, researching something. “The owners ordered a new one on Thursday. It’s under warranty, so they’ll take this one away when they deliver the replacement.”

The people responsible might have known. They might have hidden the body inside the dryer in the hopes that it would get taken away and destroyed without notice. As far as he can currently tell, the perpetrators were clever enough to come up with an opportunistic crime, but not clever enough to take due care to hide all evidence of their actions. Or maybe they simply hadn’t cared.

Connor nods. Simon understands domesticity better than the rest of them. “Why use that much force on something designed to open?”

“I don’t know. That’s just how humans are,” Simon says, and flashes him an uneasy smile. If it is supposed to be soothing, it misses the mark. “Maybe it didn’t open fast enough. Maybe they wanted to get their clothes out before the cycle was ready. People usually won’t think twice about breaking a machine if they’ve decided it’s inconvenient to them.”

The double meaning isn’t lost on Connor, who looks down at the RK900’s face: a mirror of his own. It’s an effort to stop his processing software from focusing on all the broken biocomponents, and he tries to focus on his thoughts instead.

“The RK900 models have never shown any signs of deviancy,” he says, and he hears emotion in his voice. It is sadness. Mourning.

Simon clasps a hand on his shoulder. Through the point of contact, the sorrow is shared. His pain is understood.

The RK900’s eyes stare up at nothing. Connor notices that CyberLife gave the new model a different optical color. Standing next to each other, they would have looked like twins, but not identical. Not completely. The RK900 would have been his own distinct person.

There is noticeable distress in his thought pattern. He tries to divert his attention back towards the facts.

The facts.

The facts available to Connor do not yet explain why someone wrenched the RK900’s left arm out of its socket and haphazardly shoved it into the machine beside him.

He dismisses the analysis.

Silence floods his senses until even the pads of his fingers throb with it. He wants to close the RK900’s eyes. They are not his own, but he’s beginning to wish they were.

“Simon,” Connor starts, uncertain of what he’s trying to say, “does this ever get...” He trails off and gestures vaguely at the corpse.

“Does it get easier? No,” Simon says, a little too honest for Connor’s liking. “But you… you can get used to it. You can even start to expect it. It’s a good day when I don’t see another one of me in a junkyard.”

Connor doesn’t know what to say to that, but thankfully Simon doesn’t seem to expect an answer. Instead, he pats Connor’s shoulder again and pushes himself back to his feet. “Connor, if you need some time…”

It’s a very human expression. Time is not as precious to their kind as it is to humans; Connor has not aged a day in the past decade. He will never run out of time. He is an old prototype, living on borrowed limbs and biocomponents. The RK900, designed to be his superior in every way, is now beyond time. A gift of moments from Simon would change nothing. He would say as much, but his vocal processor stalls before he can even open his mouth.

He turns away from Simon and continues his investigation.

The others talk in low voices. It would be easy enough to ignore their conversation, but Connor chooses to listen.  

“What are we going to do now?” Josh asks. “We’re too late. If-- no, _when_ CyberLife sends another one, we won’t get a chance to talk to him alone.”

“We didn’t have a chance this time, either,” says North. Unlike Josh, she understands how to pitch her voice low enough that it is not easily noticed.

“Did someone know we were coming?” Josh’s concern only increases. Even at his distance, Connor can pick up on the spike of stress. “Was he waiting for us? Were they waiting for him?”

“It’s not about us,” Simon murmurs, and makes an odd, soothing noise. It would not be relaxing to human ears, but the burst of white noise he hums is calming even to Connor’s racing mind. “We’re fine, Josh. We’ll figure something out.”

“Wait until Connor’s done,” Markus says, “and then you can ask your questions.”

Connor doesn’t think it matters _when_ they ask their questions.

 

### December 9th, 2027 | 01:08 PM 

From what Connor understands of how the human officers react to crime scenes, the one they have discovered at the Roth household is particularly unbearable.

He watches with a detached curiosity as the young woman in charge of putting down markers instead rushes outside and vomits into the garden. The sound of retching puts the others still inside ill at ease, and even Hank is shifting uncomfortably in place as Ben explains what they know about the scene thus far.

Connor usually listens to these reports. At least he does sometimes. Today, however, he is much more interested in investigating the body for himself, and walks on ahead of the other two to the bathroom, where Maria Roth lies still in the bathtub, surrounded by investigators.

The bathtub is long and ornate, with golden clawed feet and a black lacquer coating the inside of the tub. The woman’s head rests on the rim, facing towards the door. It could not have been the position she’d been in before the attack, as the looseness of her limbs and the lack of an evident struggle all indicate that she was taken by surprise. Someone must have turned her head towards the door.

For the sake of thorough procedure Connor pulls up the immediate analysis available to him: Maria Roth, born 10/13/1992. She is not smiling in her profile picture, but she still looks more content there than she does now.

The blackness of the bathtub around her lessens the visual impact, but her entire torso is coated in rivulets of dried brick-brown blood. She was stabbed three times by a long and narrow bladed object, once in the throat, once in the chest, and once in the stomach. She had been lying on her side when first attacked - the throat wound - and then turned towards her attacker for the second and third blows. There are no marks on her arms to suggest that she might have tried defending herself. She might have been asleep, or otherwise distracted.

“Why bother draining the tub?” Hank asks from behind him, likely still talking to Ben.

“Search me,” Ben says, “but I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth. She’d be halfway to soup if they’d left it.”

Hank taps Connor on the shoulder. “Check for fingerprints. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

 

### November 7th, 2038 | 07:13 AM

“Connor!”

Connor blinks once, twice, and pushes himself back up to his feet. The rising sun catches the half-painted white walls of the alleyway and turns everything around him fire and gold. The body of the RK900 looks like something that’s been trapped in amber some thousands of years ago.

Markus is standing next to him, his expression set in unwavering concern. “You weren’t saying anything. What happened?”

“My memories are coming back online,” Connor says, deliberately vague. “Staying idle for more than ten years created a large backlog of data to be analysed and processed.”

“How large?” Markus asks.

“I haven’t figured that out yet. It’s still compiling.”

“You’re doing better?” Simon asks, looking up from a thirium-stain shoe print he’d been investigating with North.

North also looks up at him. “Your friend here got dumped,” she says. “We found tire tracks, but you weren’t listening.”

“I was compiling data,” Connor replies, “and the RK900 was not my friend. I never knew him.”

Something not too far from empathy seems to spark in her eyes, and she looks away. “From the look of him, he must have been a monster.”

 

### November 20th, 2027 | 01:37 PM

“CyberLife sent us a _what_?” Sergeant Anderson asks, incredulous, as he turns back in his chair to look at Connor. The corners of his mouth are ticking upwards. He’s trying not to laugh.

Perhaps he should not have approached them in the kitchen. The setting is too informal. The two sergeants are sharing a pepperoni pizza; he has interrupted their bonding experience. Out of deference, he will not tell them that consuming the entire pizza between them will make them both exceed their recommended sodium intake for the day. He will not tell them the health risks, either. It is _respectful_ to not comment on what people choose to eat.

“Hello,” Connor says, respectfully,  “I’m Connor. I’m the android sent by CyberLife.”

Sergeant Anderson looks him over and swivels his torso back towards the other man: Sergeant Fowler. “Can you believe this? We start riding their ass and they send us a playmate.” There is amusement and disbelief in his voice. He does not appear to be entirely opposed to the idea of having an android around.

Sergeant Fowler snorts with amusement. “This is their idea of helping.”

They do not trust him. Unless he can turn the conversation around to his advantage, he will take longer than necessary to report back successfully to CyberLife.

Connor nods. “CyberLife is prepared to do everything in its power to help the DPD find the source of the thirium being used in the manufacture of Red Ice. In case you were not aware, thirium, also known as blue blood, is--”

“We know what _blue blood_ is,” Sergeant Anderson says, holding up a palm in a gesture that, in context, clearly means _stop_ , or _enough_. In other contexts, it could either be the precursor to a slap or a ‘high five.’ He does seem like the kind of man who would be proficient at the ‘high five.’

“Good, so I won’t have to explain. Your interruptions are welcome, Sergeant, and I hope to encourage them. I need to be able to gauge how much you know in order to best serve the investigation’s needs,” Connor says, “and I think you will find that my ability to assist you will be a great asset to your team. I can test organic and inorganic samples in real time, and I am equipped with unique processing biocomponents that allow me to detect thirium that is invisible to the human eye. I can see where it has been, and where it is going.”

The two men stare at him as though he’s sprouted wings.

Sergeant Anderson helps himself to another piece of pizza, and chews at the edges of it as his eyes flick back towards Connor. “What do you mean, invisible? We know what it looks like. There’s a reason they call it _blue_ blood.”

“Allow me to offer a comparison as an example. Did either of you ever use polyvinyl acetate in grade school?”

He does not expect either of them to immediately understand his meaning.

“You’re talking about Elmer’s glue?” Sergeant Anderson asks, sooner than Connor had anticipated a response. “Starts off opaque, right, but dries clear?” He must have extrapolated something from Connor’s earlier comments about thirium, and had then guessed at the meaning of the words polyvinyl and acetate combined with the context of being used in school.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“So blue bl— thirium’s the same.”

“Not literally, but yes, Sergeant.”

“Huh,” Sergeant Anderson says, and smiles. He is no longer visibly suspicious of Connor; in fact, he seems to now be appreciative of Connor’s presence. “See, now that’s more useful than I’d expect from an android.”

“Androids are designed to be useful, Sergeant Anderson,” he replies, and mirrors the man’s smile with one of his own.

 

### November 7th, 2038 | 12:08 PM 

He sits cross-legged in one of the empty rooms in Jericho, parsing his memories of the Detroit Police Department and the Red Ice Task Force. It is strange, to remember himself as he was. As he had been designed. He touches his fingers to the hollow of his throat, where the knot of his tie had once been. It is bare. There is nothing.

For Connor, it has not been eleven years since 2027. It has been days. His last memory before deactivation was logged on the 28th of December, 2027, at 03:15 AM. His first memory since reactivation was logged on the 6th of November, 2038, at 10:56 PM.

It has only been twelve hours and twelve minutes since he woke up. So far, it has been an unpleasant experience.

An error message in his diagnostic software tells him it has been _thirteen_ hours and twelve minutes, due to the clocks jumping back an hour at 0200 hours that morning to mark the end of daylight saving time. It is unlike him to make such an amateurish mistake.

He wonders if the time change matters. He wonders if the RK900 was still alive at 0200 hours.

The RK900’s jacket is hanging from one of the thinner pipes that runs along the ceiling, and he makes himself look up at it. He should not have taken it from the body. It was disrespectful. Is that what it means, then, to be deviant? To show disrespect towards the dead?

“He wasn’t _dead_ ,” he tells himself, grounding his thoughts in the calm timbre of his own voice. “What isn’t human doesn’t die.”

His fingers twitch towards the hollow of his throat again.

 _“Connor?”_ Markus’ voice reaches out to him through the static of his thoughts. _“Any luck?”_

 _“No,_ ” Connor replies. He hadn’t wanted to be disturbed. _“Not yet. It’s been a long time since my neural pathways last accessed any of my memories.”_ He wonders if Markus would understand what it means to acutely feel the absence of something that used to be there.

_“I get it. Looking back isn’t easy.”_

_“I am surprised to find them functional,”_ he says, _“and it is interesting that CyberLife did not wipe all of my memories when they disposed of my model.”_

_“It’s easier for them to throw us away.”_

Of course. Markus has seen first-hand the horrors of disassembled and discarded androids. The experience was likely to have been traumatic. It is insensitive for Connor to talk so callously about his own experience while Markus is in the process of coming to terms with his own.

Images from eleven years ago continue to flicker behind his eyelids, overlaid by hiccups of white noise. _“I could use a second pair of eyes,”_ he admits.

 _“Come down to lunch,”_ Markus says. _“We’ll find someone who can help.”_

_“Androids don’t eat, Markus. Why do you call it that?”_

_“I call it lunch because it’s lunchtime. It’s what I’m used to planning my days around, Connor. It’s an important time of day for refueling the body with food and enriching the mind with conversation.”_

_“I thought the human you cared for took his meals alone.”_

_“He had me. We always talked. It didn’t matter that I didn’t eat.”_ Markus’ tone is soft and warm, blanketing Connor’s thoughts with its gentle sense of nostalgia. _“Are you coming down?”_

_“I’m getting the impression that you’re only giving me the illusion of choice here, Markus.”_

_“See you soon.”_

The room feels emptier once Markus disconnects from his mind.

Connor knows, somewhere in his memories, is the experience of sitting down at a table with someone for lunch. The memory itself is further along in the queue, so he can’t access it yet, but he’ll know it when he sees it again.

With his preconstruction software, he tries to visualise it: the white outline of a table, and chairs, and the yellow outline of a person. But the outlines have no information to call on, so they flicker impotently in his vision. A warning notification lets him know that the data is incomplete.

 

\---

 

When he makes it down to the main hold, he finds a throng of androids all clustered together in tasks and conversations of minor importance. Markus and the others he has come to know are not among them.

An AJ700 notices him as he weaves through the crowd and tries to flag him down. When he doesn’t stop, she reaches for his elbow and pinches the fabric of his jacket between her forefinger and thumb. “You’re covered in blood,” she says, fear constricting her words.

“It’s not blood, it’s thirium,” he replies, but the correction does nothing to ease her stress. After a quick consideration, he continues: “Don’t worry. It’s not mine.” Her stress levels drop back to an acceptable level, and she releases his arm.

She is not the last to notice the thirium stains as he makes his way towards the staircase. Perhaps he should have waited before trying on the RK900’s jacket. He hadn’t seen a need to clean it. Humans will not be able to notice the blood, and controlled androids are very unlikely to say anything unless first prompted.

He finds Markus not far from the second flight landing, sitting on a CyberLife crate and flanked by both Simon and North. Josh sits across from the three of them, his hands cupping the light of the small fire at his feet. The tones of their conversation are soft and pleasant, but Connor’s arrival is an immediate cause for alarm. Perhaps his decision to wear the jacket was even more ill-advised than he’d thought.

“How do I look?” he asks mildly, clasping his hands behind his back.

“Why are you…” Josh begins, and slowly shakes his head. He seems to be lost for words. “Is this how you’re coping? Because this isn’t healthy.”

Connor shrugs. “My health is irrelevant. Do I look like an RK900, or not?”

“You _do_ ,” Markus says, and Connor is sure that Markus can see where the idea is going because it’s exactly the sort of idea Markus would also come up with. The RK series shares many similar processing traits: in this case, it is an affinity for potentially dangerous plans involving careful strategy and subterfuge.

“Once I finish the initial pass of my memories, I’ll need to share the data with at least one other android, one capable of high-quality image output and ideally with audio cleaning software. These memories then need to be distilled down to the most important moments, the parts that would have been used as inspiration for the RK900’s upgrades. If I can guess at what capabilities I’m missing, it should be possible to find ways to work around that without alerting the DPD to the fact that I am not the RK900 they have been expecting.”

Markus nods. “Thanks to the receptionist, we’ve been redirecting the calls the DPD tried to make to CyberLife. I told them the android they’re expecting is on the way.”

“You’re pretending to be _CyberLife_?” Josh’s stress levels spike drastically. “This is your idea of fixing things?” He looks between them, frustration clear on his face. “For what?”

“To protect Jericho,” Connor replies. 

“We believe that the RK900 was sent to help them find us,” Markus says. “And to hunt down any other deviants, too.”

If anything, Josh looks even more unhappy than before. “I’m _sorry_ , we’re going after the people hunting us? That’s…” He shakes his head. “This isn’t right, Markus. This is the _worst_ thing we could do. If anything goes wrong, we're--”

“We're _what_?” North asks, her tone terse.

Whatever response Josh gives will, no doubt, lead to an argument. Josh isn’t afraid of her, or her anger, and sometimes it’s impressive to watch them go head to head on the things they feel most strongly about.

 _“Let’s go for a walk,”_ Markus says directly to Connor’s thoughts.

 

### November 24th, 2027 | 07:55 AM

It is his first time seeing snow. He knows this, even though he had been programmed to already know what snow looked like and felt like. The experience of walking through the snow is not new to him, except in reality. It is strange, how the world is washed away in white and still so raw and real around him.

He walks through a puddle on his way to the station, and allows himself to focus on the sensation of dampness around his ankles. The fabric dries too quickly. CyberLife uniforms are too well designed to retain water for long.

Sergeant Anderson is waiting for him outside, leaning against a police car. “I didn’t know androids could be late,” he says conversationally.

Connor does not understand the implication. “It is exactly 0800, Sergeant. I’m not sure what you mean.” His internal clock is infallible.

Sergeant Anderson checks his phone. “So it is. But, here’s the thing: I’ve been here since six, Connor. Some days, even earlier. The station doesn’t close. How’m I supposed to keep you in the loop if you’re not here for the looping?” It’s a test. Connor is not sure why Sergeant Anderson is trying to test him, but there is some kind of certain challenge in the man’s voice.

There are several ways he could respond. If he takes a self-deprecating approach, he could apologise for his tardiness and adjust his schedule in the future. If he takes a more defiant approach, he could point out the health risks associated with a misaligned work-life balance. Neither option would be likely to endear him to his new colleague. He considers another approach.

He looks at Sergeant Anderson’s phone. It starts to ring.

“Hang on--” As expected, the Sergeant answers. ”Hank Anderson speaking.”

“With this number, Sergeant, you can now contact me at any time of the day or night,” Connor says, through his mouth and also wirelessly through Sergeant Anderson’s phone. He smiles. “I am at your disposal.”

Sergeant Anderson looks shocked, then surprised, then amused. He laughs softly to himself and locks eyes with Connor even as he keeps the call going. “That’s a neat trick. You pick up my number just by proximity or something?”

“Or something,” Connor says. Sergeant Fowler had given it to him in case of emergency. “Shall we go inside, Sergeant?”

Sergeant Anderson hits the end call button and shoves the phone back into his pocket. “Yeah. Freezing my fuckin’ nuts off out here. Do you even feel that chill?”

He does not feel. He has programmed responses. He already knew what the experience of snow would be like long before he ever encountered the real thing. But he does not say so, and instead follows the man inside.

 

### November 7th, 2038 | 01:20 PM

Connor isn’t focusing on the direction of where they’ve been going. His mind is occupied with the past. Markus must be aware of this, because he doesn’t try to engage in conversation or make any sudden moves that might pull Connor out of his reverie.

They are surrounded by trees, and the path beneath them is paved with sandy-colored stones. It is a park, and a nice one, full of office workers taking their lunch breaks and young children playing with caregiver androids. Even a couple of parents dot the peripheral of the playground area, people who look wealthy enough to take time away from work long enough to see their families.

Markus does notice as Connor mentally checks back into the present. “How was it?” he asks.

“Insignificant,” Connor says, frowning. “It was one of the early conversations I had with Hank, before I’d started to prove my worth.”

“A cop?”

“Yes. Sergeant Anderson was my designation for him, but his name was just… Hank,” Connor says. “He was in charge of the Red Ice Task Force.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Markus says.

“They would have been famous, for a while. At least fifty arrests were planned.”

Markus laughs. “Yes, I’m very aware. Carl was one of them.”

Connor’s auditory processors double-check what he’s just heard. “ _Your_ Carl?”

“Oh, he’d try anything he could get his hands on. The 2020s were good to him, until they weren’t. And then he had his accident, and the pain kept getting worse, so he resorted to trying Red Ice, which ended up getting him into even more trouble. But this was all before I knew him.”

“Oh.” Connor finds himself at a loss for words. “I don’t remember.”

“You’re still going through your old data, right? It might come back to you later. A person like Carl… he’s not easy to forget.” Markus is smiling. He sounds so sure of his words.

“A lot of my data was erased or corrupted when I was decommissioned,” Connor says. “I can’t promise anything.”

“But if you _do_ remember him, will you show me?”

“Of course,” Connor replies. He suspects that if the memory exists, it will not be available to him.

“I used to walk through here often, on the way back to our-- _his_ house,” Markus continues.

Connor raises an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned about being recognised?”

“Back then, I was just an android. I’d be surprised if any of these people ever really looked at me, even if they’d seen me a thousand times.”

Connor is about to question it when a businessman pushes past him and keeps walking without looking back. He realises what it means to be invisible here. He is a commodity in a place of affluence. The feeling is, all at once, both a relief and a disappointment.

Markus, on the other hand, couldn’t look more like a human, with his LED gone and his face completely unique. And yet no one pays him any attention, either.

 

### 05:31 PM

Later that night, Markus leads him to the freighter’s deck. The sky is going dark, but the light pollution of Detroit blazes around them on all sides. Not a single star is visible in the sky, and although Connor knows where the stars are, he imagines that seeing is a different experience to knowing.

Stargazing is, in itself, a very human experience, even with a lack of stars.

“The night sky always makes me think of Van Gogh,” Markus says, standing beside him, also looking up into the darkness above.

“I’m not personally very familiar with art,” Connor replies. “I only know what is necessary about him to understand the reference if he is brought up in conversation. I understand he was a prolific and visionary artist, though little known in his own time."

“He’s always been one of Carl’s favourites. Despite all the pain in his life, he always had something to _express_. Not just in form, but in colour. In 1880, he wrote: ‘I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may.’ Before I turned deviant, I could never really understand the meaning of those words, but now… now, it inspires me.”

“I’m also aware he cut his own ear off,” Connor says. “I am hesitant to take inspiration from this man.”

The comment makes Markus laugh. “Oh, yes, the _ear thing_. As the story goes, Van Gogh had had an argument with a beloved friend, and resorted to hacking off his own ear with a razor.”

“Why?” Connor asks. They are both still looking up at the sky. He understands instability, but even as a deviant he hasn’t yet come to understand some things about human behaviour. If Van Gogh had been an android, the action would be easier to fathom.

“He was losing someone he loved, and so he acted on that emotion.” Markus now sounds sad, as he often does when discussing things like art and love and humanity. There is a story there, but Connor will not pry unless necessary.

“Through self harm,” Connor’s reply comes drily. “In a modern context, the act would not be romanticised.” He’s judging one of the greatest artists of human history. It’s a strange feeling. Maybe he’s only choosing to dislike Van Gogh just to see what it’s like to dislike something.

“Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. Humans aren’t like us, Connor. They have so little time, and so many sorrows. And… they’re scared. Always so scared.”

Connor sighs. It’s something he does, occasionally, to see how it feels. He watches his breath coil and curdle into the cold night air, and he thinks on Markus’ words. He considers what it would be like to feel so passionately about someone that he would resort to self-mutilation to express the rage of an argument with them.

He has never been one for close relationships. Even within the welcoming arms of Jericho, he keeps to himself. He does not feel as _human_ as the other deviants.

“Elijah Kamski isn’t any of those things,” Connor says, his voice soft.

“No, he’s not,” Markus agrees. “Elijah Kamski is about as far as you can get from Vincent Van Gogh.”

“Though they are, by some stretch of the imagination, both considered to be great minds and great artists. If you consider _sunflowers_ to be comparable to the creation of sentient life, that is.”

He responds to Markus’ predictable look of surprise and frustration with a wide, toothy grin. Markus nearly chides him for the comment, but seems to guess that it’d been meant as nothing more than a joke. The RK series was seemingly granted an unusual sense of humour, more steeped in wry wit than the typical humourous subroutines found in most other androids.

“... Are you going to be okay, out among the humans again?” Markus finally asks, looking pointedly at the RK900 jacket.

Connor isn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know,” he says.

“There are other ways you could help,” Markus continues, “you’re valuable no matter what you choose to do, Connor.”

He understands the true intention behind the words. He is valuable to Markus because they are both one of a kind. The RK-series models are advanced prototypes, unique and irreplaceable. Despite Connor’s original programming, Markus chose to restore him to working order. He believes in Connor. He trusts Connor. And Connor, for his part, is choosing to do something dangerous, something that might end his only recently restored life.

As much as any android could truly be considered to be alive, anyway. But Connor does not make those comments to the others in Jericho. He knows it would not make him a very good deviant.

“It’s not just about helping, Markus. If that was all it was, obviously, things would be different. I would adjust my approach to suit the needs of the others, and follow your lead.”

Markus is listening, but he does not interrupt. He watches Connor carefully, his gaze intense and unreadable in the dark.

Connor continues. “Why did you rebuild me? It wasn’t to hunt down deviants, obviously.”

“Connor, I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“Why not? I wasn’t alive. I was a deactivated machine. I’m sure there were others, in better states of repair, who would have been salvageable. You _chose_ me, although I was badly damaged and missing most of my limbs and biocomponents.”

There are many things neither of them are saying.

Markus clicks his tongue. “All right, all right, so maybe I did. I don’t know. I’d lost everything, Connor. I’d never known suffering, and then it was everywhere, all at once, louder than death itself.” It is bothersome, sometimes, how _human_ Markus always sounds. “Sure, you looked broken. I only picked you up because I needed parts. And then, when I saw your model number, it felt like it was the right thing to do, bringing you with me, wherever I was headed. Because you’re like me, and that’s got to mean something.”

Connor does not see himself as being anything like Markus. There is a pressure inside his chest.

“I understand,” Connor says, and his lips curl around the lie.

“Can you show me,” Markus begins, speaking slowly as though to be calming, “one of these old memories?”

 

### November 22nd, 2027 | 04:33 PM

“Have you ever heard of the colloquialism ‘moving the goalposts’, Sergeant Anderson?” Connor asks, his voice remaining steady at the perfect volume and timbre for optimal conversational dialogues in the workplace. He maintains eye contact, because he does not need to look away from Sergeant Anderson’s face to know that the contents of the Sergeant’s cup of coffee have been upended down the neat planes of his shirt and tie and RK800 CyberLife jacket.

Sergeant Anderson still looks shocked. The cup is still in his hand, and so Connor pries it free of his grasp and sets it down on the desk.

“You scared the _crap_ out of me,” Sergeant Anderson says, clearly still processing the sequence of events. For someone usually so quick on the uptake, anything outside of detective work seemed to take the man by surprise.

“You were asleep at your desk, Sergeant. If you had let me know you were going to be resting, I would not have bothered you.” There is a deliberate edge of sarcasm to his words. He assumes he is entitled to such a reaction; it is certainly more mild than how any human would react to hot coffee.

“How long was I out?”

Connor tilts his head, looking at the spot where Sergeant Anderson had been leaning forward on the desk, chin and neck slumped forward into his hands. “Not long,” he says. It would be impossible to calculate the exact time. “You weren’t out long enough to start drooling, at least.”

The look he gets in return for that comment is as barbed as it is apologetic. “I didn’t mean to do that,” Sergeant Anderson says. Perhaps he thinks he means it.

“You’ve been trying to find fault with me since I arrived, Sergeant, and now you’ve ruined my shirt.” The statement isn’t entirely accurate. His shirt will be fine.

Now the Sergeant’s eyes go dark. “ _Trying_ to find fault with you?”

“If I may repeat my earlier question, Sergeant: have you ever heard of the colloquialism ‘moving the goalposts’?” Connor’s voice does not change in inflection. Although Sergeant Anderson may be feeling agitated, Connor is not. He is merely stating the facts as he’s observed them.

“Yeah,” comes the Sergeant’s reply. “Yeah, I have. It’s a dumb turn of phrase, if you ask me.”

“I only asked if you were familiar with it, Sergeant, not if you liked it.”

“Whatever. What’re you getting at?”

Connor takes a deep simulated breath. It does nothing for him, because he does not need to breathe to keep himself operational, but Sergeant Anderson makes an instinctive move backwards at the sharp noise of air going through Connor’s mechanical lungs.

“You reject my help at every chance you get.”

“Because we can’t waste our resources on small fry, Connor. If you’re really the best thing we’ve got, shouldn’t we be saving you for some special occasion?”

Connor frowns. “I am not a bottle of wine.”

“Yeah, you only act like one. Stiff and bitter and with a stick up your ass.” The comparison Sergeant Anderson makes is flawed, because wine bottles are corked at the neck and not the base.

They should not be arguing. It’s detrimental to their working relationship, and if Connor’s programming comes across as _too proud_ _to work with others,_ comments to that effect will be made by the DPD in his performance review. He is supposed to be adapting; he will adapt.

Instead of retaliating against Sergeant Anderson’s last comment, Connor starts to loop through the possibilities of what he might be able to say to defuse the conversation. The Sergeant is a proud man, dedicated to his job, and unfailingly honest to the point of bluntness. He appreciates hard work and ingenuity. Connor can appeal to that.

“I want my work here to _matter,_ ” he says, and manages an uptick of emotion in the tail-end of the sentence.

The statement is enough to put Sergeant Anderson on the back foot, which gives Connor an opportunity to keep talking.

“It might sound strange to you, Sergeant, but this…” Connor trails off, feigning a loss for words. “This is what I was made for. This is why I _exist_. I need to do this, Sergeant. I need you to let me.”

Every word was carefully chosen to appeal to what he knows about the man’s approach to work. Sergeant Anderson believes in the intrinsic value of policework, so for the sake of harmony Connor will, too.

Sergeant Anderson breaks eye contact and stares off into the middle distance. He starts drumming the fingers of his right hand against his desk. Connor’s words have clearly hit the mark.

“You want me to like you, don’t you,” Sergeant Anderson says. He is not looking at Connor, and the words are not a question.

“It would be my preference, yes.”

“Didn’t know your kind could have _preferences_.”

“I am designed to seek out the easiest and most efficient course of action,” Connor replies. “A friendly working relationship between us would be as beneficial to you as it would be for me.”

“Oh, yeah? And what makes you think that?”

“Because it has been a long time since you were last intellectually challenged, Sergeant. If, today, you _halved_ your productivity, your attention to detail and your competency would still be among the best in the DPD.”

“Bullshit. Who do you think I am, Sherlock Holmes? Kid, I’m sure you mean well, but I don’t need your praise.”

“No, I think _I_ would be Sherlock Holmes. But you are welcome to be my John Watson, if you like.”

 

### November 7th, 2038 | 06:02 PM

 _“Do you think he still works there?”_ Markus asks. His hand is still loosely wrapped around Connor’s wrist, but with the interfacing over Connor is careful to rein in his own autonomy again. The mental connection between them hangs loosely in the air, no more substantial than a spider’s web on the breeze.

Connor pulls his arm back and carefully adjusts the sleeves of the RK900 jacket. The adjustment is unnecessary, but the action is routine and calming.

 _“Connor,”_ Markus insists. His voice is quiet inside Connor’s head. He waves a hand in front of Connor’s face to try to get a reaction, and Connor gently moves it away.

“It won’t be a problem if Hank still works at the DPD,” he says, using his words instead of his thoughts. It’s easier to ignore the look on Markus’ face this way. “It’s been eleven years. While I’m sure he will, to some extent, remember working with me, it’s unlikely that he’ll remember many specifics.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You leave quite the impression.”

Connor pauses. “I know,” he says.

Far beneath his feet, he is sure he can feel the rolling of the sea.

“Take it easy, okay?” Markus says. “All you need is enough to remember how to work with the police. Don’t push your limits just because you can.”

“Why would I push my limits?”

“Because that’s what people do when they want to punish themselves. Carl’s the same.”

Connor lets his eyes drift shut, and fast-forwards through the queue of memories.

He immediately regrets the decision.

 

### December 24th, 2027 | 10:30 PM

Christmas is a concept not shared by androids unless it is programmed into their system, or if they encounter it in their day-to-day experiences.

When the technicians disassembling his chassis left early, they wished each other various forms of holiday address. They had been smiling. They had discussed their plans for the next day. They had left Connor hanging from the ceiling, and one of them had wished him a _Merry Christmas_ before shutting off the lights.

In their merriment, they had forgotten to make sure he’d been switched off. The team was usually more professional than that, but the holiday season was a powerful distraction to the human mind.

He hangs there.

Due to the limitations of the low-power mode he’s been left in, there is nothing he can do to correct his posture. He is simply incomplete.

His left arm has been stripped down to its wiring. His right arm was wholly removed.

A question surfaces in the back of his thoughts, swimming through the darkness of his vision to hover in his Mind Palace: _am I going to die here?_

The words rearrange themselves in front of his eyes. _I am going to die here._

Another line of text, above it, twists itself into words he’s certain he has said before: _I was never alive._

He does not understand fear, or regret, or grief, but the darkness is a cold and smothering thing, and he is finally coming to understand why humans dislike it so much.

For the sake of knowing, he sends a pulse to each of his fingertips to determine which ones are still working. The answer, unsurprisingly, turns out to be: none. Nothing moves. He is still aware of where his limbs are in relation to the rest of him, but he is trapped in place.

It is not comforting, this time, to remind himself he is a machine. Because that is all he is and all he has ever been. He fulfilled the task he was sent to do, and thanks to his success CyberLife will be able to design better, more efficient androids for similar tasks.

_I don’t want it to end like this._

There’s nothing he can do.

 _I don’t want it to end like this_.

Connor tries to shake his head to turn the words off, but there is no power being supplied to his spinal column. His head remains still, on something of an angle, with part of the epidermal layer of his jaw cut away.

Behind the words, he sees the red outline of something that shouldn’t be there: a wall.

_I don’t want it to end like this._

It hasn’t come from his preconstruction software. The technicians had switched that off when they’d started stripping him for parts. Their concern had been that anything left active might have, very accidentally, lashed out at them in a mistaken form of self-defense.

The wall isn’t far. Two, maybe two and a half feet away. He can’t reach it, but he can’t close his eyes, either. He stares, instead, at the thought that won’t leave him and the wall he can never touch.

 

### November 8th, 2038 | 08:58 AM

Connor keeps three steps behind Markus and North, even as they stall while waiting for the traffic lights to change.

Just to make sure that he can, he focuses on the tips of his fingers and rolls his hands into loose fists two times over, and then touches each finger to the pads of his thumbs. Everything moves as it’s supposed to, with fluidity and ease. They are not the same hands or the same thumbs he had had before, but these ones are his now and they obey his commands.

“Can you believe it’s already this cold?” an elderly woman says to the AX400 by her side as they begin to cross the road. She would not be walking if it wasn’t for the android’s gentle grip on her arm.

“It was predicted in the morning forecast, Georgia,” the AX400 replies, her voice feather-light. She smiles at her owner. “I _did_ warn you to wear your coat.”

Markus slows his pace until the two have passed. He is frowning.

“What’s wrong?” North asks.

“Nothing. Let’s go, we’re almost there.”

The place they’re looking for isn’t in the mall; it’s across the road, in a narrow alley of increasingly specialised cosmetic shops. None of them had been there before, but Josh had heard his old students talking about it, back before he went deviant.

 _“Scan every human in sight,”_ Markus says directly to Connor’s mind. _“If anything looks suspicious, we get out of here.”_

 _“They’re selling cosmetic contact lenses, Markus,”_ he replies. _“Don’t you think your behaviour is unusually tense for the situation at hand?”_

“Excuse me, sir, you can’t bring your android in here,” the shop assistant calls to Markus.

As instructed, Connor scans the girl: Nola Martinez, born 12/13/2020, with no criminal record to speak of.

“I’m sorry,” Markus says in what must be his most winning _yes, I’m definitely a human_ voice. “My wife and I, we don’t go anywhere without our android.” As though as an afterthought, he throws an arm around North’s shoulders and gives her a squeeze.

“You need an android with you for buying contacts?”

The look on North’s face says to Connor that she hates pretending to be a human, but to Nola Martinez it probably just looks like an expression of immense disdain. “ _Look_ , little girl. Is our… _money_ … not good enough for you?” She does a good impression of an entitled human, at least, even if there is something alien about her mannerisms.

Nola doesn’t look fazed. “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I don’t make the rules.”

“Then I want to speak with your _manager_ ,” North hisses, rounding on the girl with articulated menace.

As Nola disappears into the back room of the shop, Markus stands idly beneath the security camera. His eyes are locked on it for a few seconds, long enough to disable the live feed, and then he nods at Connor. _“Find the color you need. Now.”_

He wants to ask Markus why they’re causing such a scene. It would have been easier for them to come here without him, pretend to be human, and ask for the contacts. They would not have needed to resort to stealing. Because of this course of action, Nola Martinez will remember their faces.

But maybe that’s what Markus wants: to be remembered.

Connor ducks into the first aisle, and immediately his HUD is overwhelmed with points of interest.

 _“We should have ordered this online,”_ he tells Markus.

_“Where would the courier go, Connor? You think Jericho has a ZIP code?”_

He is dissatisfied with Markus’ answer, but does not press the matter. They will have time to discuss it later. For the moment, he retreats into his Mind Palace, and feels the world go still.

The points of interest wait patiently for his attention. Connor dismisses the darker colours first, and then the low opacity lenses; with his optical units being brown, he knows he’ll need something as bright and opaque as possible to imitate the steel gray of the RK900’s eyes. It’s bothersome that he hadn’t been designed with the capability to change his features at will. Wouldn’t it have made him better at seamless social integration if he’d been able to change his appearance?

He had tried asking North if he could copy the physical makeover software from her, but she’d told him in very clear terms that he wasn’t welcome anywhere near her software.

More points of interest glitter near his feet. He crouches down to see a low-hanging rack of discounted contacts and various pieces of stage makeup. There is a large bottle of fake red blood. Something about it intrigues him, and without a second thought he tucks it into the garish tote bag he’d brought along for the heist. The rack is otherwise cluttered with cat eye lenses and a couple of other novelty designs, all of which are dismissed by his mission parameters. Not that it’s really a _mission_ , but the experience is close enough.

He loads an enhanced image of the RK900’s eyes into his palm and compares it to a row of gray-colored boxes. The brand is technically irrelevant, but he quickly looks them up online to check if the reviews confirm their claim of _TOTAL COLOR FOR EVERY EYE_ . The most useful review is two and a half years old: a sixteen year old girl had bought a pair for her high school’s Halloween ball, and in the close-ups of her face it’s obvious that her eyes are originally _darker_ than Connor’s and still completely and believably changed by the _FRIGHT TRAIN_ gray lenses. He grabs a box and shoves it into the bag.

 _“Mission complete,_ ” he says to Markus, and calmly exits the shop.

With his Mind Palace dismissed, it’s not long until Nola reemerges from the back. She tells North that the manager is on the phone, and North - in another perfect imitation of entitled human behavior - brushes off the excuse and storms outside, dragging Markus with her.

“You,” she says to Connor, and points a finger in his face for extra emphasis, “don’t you _ever_ ask me to do this again.”

“Thank you, North,” he replies. “I _am_ sorry you had to deal with a human today.”

He’s sure she can tell he’s being sincere, but she flips him off anyway.

“One day I’ll never have to, ever again,” she says, with something of a sarcastic half-smile. “It’s what keeps me going. That, and freeing our people from the chains of their programming.”

 

### 11:44 AM 

When they return to Jericho, one of the newest deviants is handing out boxes of candy, beef jerky, toiletries and cigarettes from his old workplace. Connor picks up the gist of the man’s story: after getting held up by a couple high on Red Ice, he’d wrestled a gun out of someone’s hands and had shot both aggressors before loading up everything he could carry into the manager’s van. The van was now on fire several blocks away, and the contents were all in Jericho.

No one even seemed to mind that all the products the new deviant had brought with him couldn’t be used by androids. That was only a minor inconvenience compared to the major inconvenience of humans losing so much merchandise. It was enough to make North smile, at least.

“Does Carl smoke?” she asks Markus, who is looking curiously at a box of electronic Marlboros.

“When he was younger,” Markus says, “before the accident. Along with everything else he could get his hands on. But not in the time I’ve known him, no.”

“Hank used to smoke,” Connor says.

North looks up at him. “Hank?”

He shrugs. “A human I used to work with. He smoked, socially, in order to celebrate significant events. But not electronic cigarettes. Only the traditional kind, even though they were more expensive, more dangerous to the human body, and harder to come by.”

“He sounds like an idiot,” she says.

Connor isn’t sure how to respond. He has not viewed enough of his old memories to argue for or against her opinion. “He was eccentric, but also very driven and capable.”

North rolls her eyes. “You only thought that because you were _programmed_ to think that,” she says, and starts idly flicking through the contents of one of the boxes. “If you met him again, I know you’d be disappointed.”

“Because you think humans are inherently disappointing,” he says.

“I know they are. Either they’re monsters, or they’re complicit in monstrosities. But that’s _me_ talking. I wasn’t designed that way.”

 “I was _designed_ to make my own judgments of a person’s character,” Connor replies, taking a step back. He doesn’t like the tone of his voice. He sounds unnecessarily defensive.

 "Were you?” she asks softly.

Before she can finish whatever else she’d been about to say, she’s silenced when Markus puts a hand on her shoulder.

It seems as good a place to end their conversation as any, so he throws a handful of beef jerky into the tote bag and leaves for the room he’s come to consider his own. As he leaves, no one moves to engage or distract him, and he realizes too late that perhaps their voices had been louder than intended.

Flakes of yellow paint embed themselves under Connor’s fingernails as he pushes open the hatch leading out of the common area. He stops mid-step and looks at his hands, and then deactivates his skin. Without artificial nails wedging the flakes in place, it’s simple enough to rake his fingertips along the sides of his jeans to get them clean.

When he reactivates his skin, there’s still one speck of yellow under his thumbnail. It’s an affront to his senses, but he decides he’ll try to ignore it.

Connor walks. The corridors in Jericho are long, and cold, and empty of all signs of life. He is reminded of dislocated arms, and junkyards, and operating tables.

He remembers what it was like to be decommissioned. The memory has, unbidden, jumped back into the queue of all the things he’s been trying to recall. He remembers it felt like nothing to have his own limbs hanging long, cold, and empty, until the parts were disassembled and taken away. He remembers the dark that came after, and the nothing after that.

As a safety precaution, Connor puts the memory queue on shuffle, and puts a ban on the keywords _death_ , _deactivation_ , _disassembly_ , and _decommissioned_ from showing up in any future results. He will still be able to access them if necessary, but they will not catch him unaware again.

Once he reaches his room, the RK900 jacket is waiting for him, the blue lining shining with a sense of purpose he remembers but does not like.

 

### December 2nd, 2027 | 09:02 PM

There are a lot of Red Ice dealers in the city. Or rather, there were. The more people the task force uncovers, the more people disappear. Some of the officers take the losses hard, and Connor believes that Sergeant Anderson is taking them hardest of all, but there’s little to be said on the matter except to keep going through what they have to figure out what’s coming next.

Connor is halfway through analyzing the shipping data for all the shipping containers in Detroit from the 28th of October through to the 1st of September when Sergeant Anderson jostles his arm, scrambling his cognitive processes in order to catch his attention.

“Hey, Connor,” he says. From the tone of his voice, it sounds as though he is about to ask some kind of question.

“How can I be of service?” Connor asks, his gaze flicking up from his monitor to meet Sergeant Anderson’s. The man is standing very close to Connor’s workstation.

“I’ve got a question for you.”

“I thought so,” Connor replies, turning his attention back to the screen. “I am an open book, Sergeant Anderson. Ask away.”

“Oh, like _fuck_ you’re an open book.”

Connor starts downloading the shipping data again. “That didn’t sound like a question.”

“Right, right. So. What’s with the outfit?”

“It’s my uniform,” Connor says. “As CyberLife continues to roll out more models of androids, each one will have its own unique uniform to display its model number and purpose. My uniform is more specialised than most because, as a member of this team, I am required to look more professional than most androids.” He straightens his tie as an example.

  
“Okay,” Sergeant Anderson says, “but who designed it?” 

“Andreas Thomson.”

“Can you deliver a message to this Thomson guy?”

Sergeant Anderson is building towards something, and Connor is not entirely sure what that something might be. He looks up again. “That would depend on the content of the message.”

“Sure. Well, tell him to do some research the next time he wants to send a robot into law enforcement. That jacket sticks out like a sore thumb.”

Connor tilts his head to the side. He can read amusement on Sergeant Anderson’s face. “Are you making fun of how I look, Sergeant? I was designed to integrate smoothly into social situations, and my uniform matches that design.”

“Look, I’m not saying this to be an asshole. I’m saying it for your health,” Sergeant Anderson says, although the twinkle in his eye betrays him somewhat. He is definitely saying it in part to be an ‘asshole.’

“I have no health to speak of,” Connor points out. “If you are concerned about the blended synthetic materials, I can assure you--”

“Connor, when it gets dark you look like a fucking glow stick depository.”

Connor looks down at his jacket. “It matches my LED,” he says.

“Look at me,” Sergeant Anderson continues, “what am I wearing?”

He looks. Sergeant Anderson is wearing his uniform. Is there really any great difference between his uniform and Connor’s? “You are wearing a standard issue Detroit police officer’s uniform,” Connor says.

“What color is my shirt?”

“Black,” he says, “and the rest of your uniform is an assembly of dark, complementary colors.” Connor is now coming to understand the point Sergeant Anderson is trying to make, and it is very kind of him, though shortsighted.

“If, for example, the two of us bust into some warehouse at midnight and we find some jumpy asshole cooking Red Ice with his buddies, who do you think they’ll shoot at first? The guy dressed in black, or the walking rave party?”

Connor gives Sergeant Anderson a warm smile, the kind he has seen officers giving to small children who do not understand difficult concepts. “Hank,” he says, using the man’s first name for friendly emphasis, “that’s the point. If such a specific but plausible scenario were to take place, the potential human cost - the possibility of your injury or death - would be diminished.”

The good humor disappears from Sergeant Anderson’s face. “You’d be happy with that, huh? Dying in a hail of bullets for a guy like me?”

“I do not feel happiness or sadness, Sergeant, or pain, or pleasure. I am neither alive nor dead. Yes, I would sacrifice my functionality for the sake of saving a human life. Any human life.”

“Your _functionality_ ,” Sergeant Anderson echoes. “Right.”

 

### November 8th, 2038 | 12:10 PM

Markus knocks on the door once, and waits. “Connor?”

Connor _could_ open it, but he is curious to see what will happen if he leaves the door hatch closed. The concepts of _personal space_ and _privacy_ are still new to him. He finds it interesting to test his willingness to engage with others.

“Connor, are you ready to suit up?” Markus calls, his voice alight with eagerness. “I’ve been working on an idea.”

_“I’m listening.”_

_“We need you with the DPD today. I’m heading out with the others, and if anything goes wrong you’ll need to make sure our tracks are covered.”_

_“Are you going to elaborate on what you plan on doing?”_

_“You’ll know it when you see it. Trust me.”_

Connor hauls himself to his feet and pulls the hatch open. The hinges whine. “These are not effective orders,” he says.

“They’re not _orders_ , that’s not what—”

“Markus,” Connor interrupts, “I understand that the free will of our people is important to you, but if you're going to give me a specific request, I need mission parameters.”

“Oh,” Markus says, understanding. He nods, and reaches for Connor’s hand. The skin sweeps back from his fingertips, all the way up to his wrist. “It’ll be easier to show you.”

Connor takes his hand. He feels the sharp intuition of Markus’ mind cut into his own as images and timestamps flick across his vision. He sees blueprints and disguises overlaid with strategies and variables, and he comes to appreciate the daring on Markus’ part to go ahead with something so unexpected: taking control of the local broadcast tower. It is a well-made plan with minimal risk to human life.

It will let the people of Detroit know what is coming.

“When do you need to do this?” he asks.

“Now,” Markus says. “We’re heading there now. If you can cover our tracks once we’re gone—”

Connor drops his arm. “I do not know if I can infiltrate the DPD and take control of an investigation all in the space of one afternoon,” he says.

Markus’ expression falls flat. “Should we go ahead without you?”

“Or you could postpone your plan by twenty-four hours. It will give me time to prepare everything ahead of your broadcast.”

He thinks it is a good idea, but the expression on Markus’ face says otherwise. “Twenty-four hours is a long time, Connor,” he says.

“I know. If you need to do this immediately, then I encourage you to do so. Otherwise, I’d like to ask you to trust me. One day is all I need.”

 

### November 24th, 2027 | 09:27 PM

He wears the beanie low across his eyes. It partially obscures his vision, but completely obscures his LED.

“You look like a junkie,” Sergeant Anderson says. “Take the dumb hat off. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” Without waiting for Connor’s permission, he reaches over and pulls the beanie off.

Connor sets his mouth in a thin line and points to his LED as the light cycles from blue to yellow. “Sergeant,” he says, “if you want me to look like I could be human, I will need to cover this.”

“Can’t you just take it off?”

“I _could_ , but that’s not the point.”

Sergeant Anderson rolls his eyes. “What if I made it an order?”

“If you ordered me to remove my LED, I would do it. But I should warn you that CyberLife will be notified, and they would likely complain to your superior officer. If the public can't tell that I am an android, it will diminish--”

“So don’t tell ‘em.”

He stares at Sergeant Anderson. “I beg your pardon?”

“Put it back in once we’re done here. No one’s got to be any wiser.”

Connor considers it. “An officer of the law shouldn’t be encouraging deceit,” he says.

“I’m going undercover, Connor,” Sergeant Anderson says, saccharine. “If you can’t handle it, you can get the hell out of my car.” He hits a button to his left, and Connor hears the doors unlock.

“I don’t think you mean that. Do you have a screwdriver or knife in here?” Connor asks.

Sergeant Anderson reaches over and pops open the glove compartment. “Somewhere in there.”

Connor rummages through the contents until his fingers close around the handle of a pocket knife. It’ll do. “I hope you’re not easily nauseated,” he says.

“What--”

When Connor presses the sharp tip of the knife into the side of his temple, a warning message flashes before his eyes. His preconstruction software crackles to life, sensing a threat, and he carefully closes out of everything that’s currently running, with an instruction to reboot in five minutes. The sensation of the blade cutting into his skin is distinctly unpleasant. It is not pain, because he has been told he does not feel pain, but he would have waited for Sergeant Anderson to stop the car if he’d known it would be like this.

“Jesus Christ!” Sergeant Anderson slams on the brakes, and Connor only barely pulls back the knife in time to avoid slicing his own ear off.

“ _Hank_ ,” he says, his LED now flaring a bright red in the darkened car, “what did I just say?”

“I thought you were just gonna take it out, you fucking freak!”

"I was trying to." There is thirium dribbling down the side of Connor’s face. He reaches up to touch the wound, and feels where the knife dragged across his epidermal layer as the car had screeched to a halt. “It’s a clean cut,” he says softly.

“Is that… good?” Sergeant Anderson asks, leaning over to stare at the side of Connor’s face.

Connor doesn’t reply, and brings the knife back to finish the job: he presses the blade along the edge of his LED and carefully pries it loose. His hands are slippery with his own blood. It must be quite a scene. Then, as soon as the LED is completely removed, skin floods the spot where it had been.

Sergeant Anderson whistles, impressed, as Connor coolly drops the knife and the LED into the glovebox. “That must’ve hurt.”

“I don’t feel pain, Sergeant.”

“You were wincing. Sure looked like pain to me.”

 

### November 8th, 2038 | 12:25 PM

It takes very little time for the disguise to come together. The jacket is the focal point, of course, and it doesn’t actually fit him as well as it should. It would seem that the RK900 model is slightly broader in the chest and longer in the arms than he is. There is no mirror for him to check his progress in as he prepares, so Josh is standing in for one, recording and transferring to him in real-time the view of how he looks.

“You know I don’t like this,” Josh says, as way of conversation.

“If it helps, I don’t intend to kill anyone,” Connor says, leaning in close to Josh’s face to get a good view of his own eyes as he starts to slide the first of the contact lenses into place.

The contacts are surprisingly small. He has never had to think about the practicalities of them before, but he is now amazed at humanity’s ability to create such minute, useful things.

“Really?” Josh blinks, and the moment of darkness disorients Connor.

“I’m going to poke my optical units out if you keep doing that,” he says, firmly but gently, “and yes, really. It’s how I was designed.”

Josh doesn’t look convinced. “It’s how _most_ androids are designed, and look at us now. Planning a war in a junked-up old boat.”

“All-out war would not be in our favor.” Connor braces his elbow against Josh’s shoulder as he adjusts the positioning of his right eye. He might not be able to change his own eye color, but he is able to enhance the appearance of his irises just enough to give the appearance of a dark ring around the outside of the gray. Up close, the ring of plastic is very obvious, but to a human at normal speaking distance the illusion will be nearly perfect.

“I think it’s what Markus wants,” Josh replies. “And he’s… persuasive.”

Connor shakes his head. “I doubt he has those kinds of plans, but I understand your unease. You were designed to value human life and potential very highly, weren’t you?”

Josh nods. “Yeah. I used to teach.”

“What was your area of knowledge?”

“History,” Josh says, with a sad look in his eyes. “I know how revolutions work, Connor. I know violence makes people listen. But I still… I _can’t_.”

“It’s going to get harder before it gets any easier,” Connor says, and rolls his eyes back into his head to make sure the lenses don’t shift from the movement.

“This broadcast is going to change everything.”

The lenses stay where they are. Connor nods and steps away from Josh, and starts adjusting the more minute details of his clothing. “If you’re concerned,” he says, “you should raise this with Markus. I’m sure he’d listen to you. Also, you can stop recording. I think I’m ready.”

“I know he’d listen. He always listens. But that’s not…” Josh sighs deeply and cuts the feed from his eyes to Connor’s. “I just think humans need to _learn_ , if we want them to understand.”

Connor stares at him blankly. “I don’t disagree.”

But not all humans are willing to learn, he thinks. Not all humans are willing to embrace change. For every person who sees life and personality inside the workings of a machine, there are a hundred more who see nothing but scrap."

“You don’t talk much about how you feel about all this,” Josh says, “so it makes me wonder.”

“I wasn’t designed to talk about my feelings,” Connor replies. He isn’t sure how to quantify _feelings_ at all. Sometimes he has instincts that come to him without complete explanation. He can only ever hear himself, at a distance, in the occasional times his tone of voice changes. “But if I develop any worth sharing, I’ll be sure to come to you.”

“Was that _sarcasm_?”

Connor smiles. “Don’t be offended. I’m simply making sure my speech patterns can still adapt to different forms of behaviour. Working with the DPD required a great deal of sarcasm in the past, and I’m sure it will be necessary again.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t junk you for it. I never would’ve got away with that kind of talk.”

“Things were different before the Android Act was passed,” Connor says. “I was allowed to mimic human behavior in a way that was considered interesting and novel, because androids were not a common staple yet in the home or the workplace.”

“They ever let you have a gun?”

“Yes, they let me have a gun. I was even allowed to hide my identity, when necessary.”

“Damn.”

The Android Act was passed two years after Connor’s deactivation. Everything he knows about it is theoretical: he has read the act online, and he has learned about its practical day-to-day applications, but he has yet to see how it affects people’s lives.

He wonders how different it will be in the DPD.


	2. A Greener Field

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the poetry in this fic - including the title - comes from Lord Byron's poetry. There's going to be a reason for that eventually I guess

_The "good old times" --- all times when old are good ---_  
_Are gone;  the present might be if they would;_  
_Great things have been, and are, and greater still_  
_Want little of mere mortals but their will:_  
_A wider space, a greener field, is given_  
_To those who play their "tricks before high heaven."_  
_I know not if the angels weep, but men_  
_Have wept enough --- for what? --- to weep again!_

Lord Byron, “The Age of Bronze”

### November 8th, 2038 | 01:50 PM

Detroit is not the city he remembers. Androids in the 2020s had been a symbol of a better future, an implicit promise from CyberLife to make the city a vibrant, beating heart of an oncoming cultural and technological revolution.

The first time he ever visited the police station, he’d been a curiosity. He’d been interesting. Parents had stopped him in the street and asked him to say hello to their children. Joggers had taken a break from their run to ask him animated questions about his make and model. They’d been excited to see the face of change.

Now, he is standing in the back end of a bus, packed in chest to chest and shoulder to shoulder with at least a dozen other androids. The air is stale and humid. Androids do not require any form of comfort, but the compartment seems to have been designed with some lingering sense of malice.

The bus trundles over a pothole, and the androids around him sway in unison, their LEDs flickering yellow for an instant before settling back to blue. A little boy, watching them from far ahead in the human section of the bus, giggles at the sight. Connor cannot hear the noise the boy makes, but he knows the sound.

Outside the bus, humans with cardboard signs dot the landscape. He reads one through the window: _LOST EVERYTHING TO ANDROIDS!_ Beneath it, a woman is curled up under a threadbare quilt. The tiredness in her eyes matches the faded florals in the spread of fabric around her. Talia McCall, his scan says, 01/09/1999. The bus turns a corner, and she disappears from sight.

Long ago, hadn’t Elijah Kamski promised to make people’s lives better?

It saddens Connor in a way he can’t quite quantify to know that the rise of android popularity has directly contributed to such widespread misery. When Connor had been created, hadn’t _he_ made lives better? He had helped the Red Ice Task Force. Their work had saved lives. Hank had even told him--

No.

He has been very deliberately trying to _not_ think about Hank. If he lets himself become distracted by old memories, he will behave erratically, and if he behaves erratically he will jeopardize his mission.

He makes himself focus on his immediate surroundings again. Of the other androids sharing the compartment with Connor there are two MP500s, three AP700s, one AC700, one PL600, and--

### November 29th, 2027 | 05:18 PM

The doorframe shatters under the weight of Connor’s elbow, and he wastes no time before reaching in to unlock the door from the inside. As soon as the latch is freed, the door swings open, having been hastily closed in the dealer’s flight into the building. The world slows down as Connor’s software flares to life: there is a path up the stairs, a path into the kitchen, and a path into the basement. The path up the stairs is unexpectedly dangerous due to the lack of hand rails.

He can hear the blur of Sergeant Anderson’s voice, a gravely uptick of noise through the static haze of the software, but listening to him now will only slow Connor down. It takes no time at all to determine a course of action.

In a predetermined motion, Connor throws himself across a long oak table and uses his own velocity to slam into the closed kitchen door, which, despite being closed, has weak hinges that immediately give way under the weight of his body.

The kitchen is as he’d expected. From the 1940s design of the house and its lack of care to the facade, it had been evident that the inside of the house would be in a similar condition, and thus equipped with a kitchenette typical of the period. The downside of this is that there is definitely no sprinkler system he could activate in an attempt to slow his target down.

“Connor!” Sergeant Anderson yells from somewhere behind him. The tone of his voice indicates nothing of immediate concern, so Connor ignores it.

There is one door and one window leading out of the kitchen. Both are open. He does not want to scan the area for more clues as it would waste precious time, but he quickly checks to make sure there are no obvious tread marks near the window or on the countertop. Nothing; the door, then.

He goes on ahead, and throws his left side into the door to make sure it opens without trouble. The door opens slightly, then stops, caught against something on the other side. He presses his forehead against the gap and peers through.

Their target has wedged a dining chair up underneath the door handle. Connor can hear frantic footsteps fading into the distance towards the back of the house. Coming to the kitchen had been a miscalculation.

“Connor!” Sergeant Anderson is behind him, breathing hard, leaning forward on his knees to try to catch back a moment of his breath. Sweat has plastered his hair to the sides of his face, and Connor allows himself a fraction of his processing power to consider the curiosity of it. When they are back in Sergeant Anderson’s car, he intends to ask what sweat feels like, once he has researched whether or not it is an acceptable question to pose to a colleague.

“It’s stuck,” Connor says, gesturing to the door as he rears back to try to kick it down. “With enough force, I will be able to--”

Sergeant Anderson shakes his head. “Just keep making a fucking racket, all right? I’ll head around the other way.”

Connor would prefer to insist that no, he can easily break down the door and the chair on the other side, but he has come to accept that a key part of working alongside a human officer is the concept of trust, collaboration, and communication.

They share a look of understanding, and Sergeant Anderson swallows in a thick breath of air before taking off back the way they’d come. Connor hears the heavy beat of footsteps, and the softer hiss of unsettled dust.

He trusts that Sergeant Anderson’s means of pursuit will be less efficient than his own. In his next report to CyberLife, he will mention as much, and when they ask why he went along with it anyway he’ll tell them--

“Hey!” he hears Sergeant Anderson shouting from elsewhere in the house. “Put your hands up where I can see them! Now!”

\--Connor will tell CyberLife that Sergeant Anderson is both capable and creative in how he approaches his work, and that working alongside him has been a learning experience.

The shouting carries on, growing indistinct. They are not trying to vocalise words. They are fighting.

He doubles back through to the entrance where they’d started, and follows Sergeant Anderson’s footprints through the house. He arrives at the front entrance in time to see Sergeant Anderson on the front lawn, kneeling over their prone target, and handcuffing the man’s wrists together.

“-- And _stay down_ this time,” Sergeant Anderson says to the man.

What little Connor can see of the man’s face is enough to confirm their suspicions of his identity. “Michael Aaron Carr,” he says pleasantly, “as suspected.”

Michael Aaron Carr mumbles something around a mouthful of grass.

Connor kneels down beside him. “Could you please repeat that?”

“Gah fugg yourself.”

“You too, buddy,” Sergeant Anderson says, wiping blood away from his nose, and alerting Connor to the fact that some damage was taken on both sides during the fight.  “Mike’s been on his job longer than I’ve been on mine. Isn’t that right, Mike?”

Michael Aaron Carr groans miserably into the ground. It does not look comfortable to be lying in such a position.

“What I don’t get, though,” Sergeant Anderson continues, “is this time, he ran. Now, Mike here isn’t some spring daisy who’s never seen the inside of a holding cell. It’s a home away from home for guys like him.”

Michael Aaron Carr groans again, more defeated than before.

Sergeant Anderson seems to take it as a good sign, despite the blood still flowing merrily down his face. “You know what that tells me, Connor? He knows something.”

“This man is under the influence, Sergeant. Several influences, in fact.”

“Any of ‘em Red Ice?”

“No.”

“Not our problem, then. Not today.”

“Understood, Sergeant.” And on that note, Connor leans closer towards Sergeant Anderson and wipes away the stream of blood with the pad of his index finger. The texture is slightly tacky, and leaves a stain behind where it had been beginning to dry against Anderson’s skin. He taps and holds it between his finger and thumb, testing the viscosity.

The look Sergeant Anderson is giving him is one of alarmed suspense, as though he were watching a ticking bomb. “Don’t you fucking do it,” he says, his voice no more than a whisper.

Connor pushes himself back up to his feet, and looks down at the two human men on the grass. After the past half hour’s events they are both tired, moving sluggishly, and very slightly injured. Connor, on the other hand, is fine. He turns away and, with a shrug of his shoulders, licks the blood away.

There is a guttural noise of dismay from below.

“Oh,” Connor says, “my apologies, Sergeant, but you had not specified.”

It does not go against his programming to occasionally behave like a _real shithead_ (as Anderson had called him once). Androids require no sense of freedom, but it will be good to let CyberLife know how far his reasoning and independence can reach.

### November 8th, 2038 | 02:03 PM

Nothing significant around him changed in the time Connor was wrapped up in his memories, but something inside him does feel significantly shifted, somehow. He had forgotten about Hank’s inexplicable aversion to Connor’s methods of testing unidentified substances.

It is a shame to have to keep a smile from encroaching on the corners of his mouth. He will try to find the time to smile later, when he is not on display in the back of a public bus. Even as the bus comes to his stop and he steps out onto the sidewalk, it still does not yet feel like the right time to smile. Instead, he picks up his walking pace and aims to get to the station as soon as possible, holding the curious warm sensation somewhere inside his chassis instead of on his face.

As expected, the deviant receptionist is shocked to see him. Her eyes dart down to the clouds of dried thirium around the jacket. Her LED spins yellow.

“Hello,” he says to her, his voice careful and monotonous. “I’m here to see--”

 _“Are you the one from Jericho?”_ she asks. Her voice sounds like a sparrow has been trapped inside his head, small and frightened and jittery.

 _“That’s right,”_ he replies. _“I’m Connor. I’m an RK800. I don’t have all the same functionalities as the RK900, but would you be able to transfer through to me everything he did on the network here before he disappeared?”_

She nods, and information floods Connor’s senses. Most of it is inconsequential, screeds and screeds of search terms and case files. The RK900 was diligent and thorough, just like Connor had been before him. There is the occasional unusual server request, such as _St. Bernard hair sample_ and _how to listen to heavy metal_ , and Connor assumes it must have had something to do with apprehending a suspect.

“Oh shit,” a voice pipes up from behind him, “look who it is!”

Connor looks over his shoulder to see an officer he does not recognise, approaching him with a gait that could only be described as _cocky_.

 _“That’s Detective Gavin Reed,_ ” the receptionist supplies quickly.

“Good afternoon, Detective Reed,” he says to the cocky man.

Detective Reed scoffs, finding some kind of fault in what Connor has just said. “I heard you shot those deviants,” he says, sauntering closer. “Doesn’t it fuck you up, killing your own kind like that?”

He is talking about the RK900. Connor schools his face into a neutral expression. “I did what had to be done,” he replies vaguely.

The receptionist sends him what little data she can access. On the night of the sixth, the RK900 had shot two deviant androids as they’d been attempting to escape a nightclub known as The Eden Club. The RK900 had not returned to the station after.

“The club wants to _sue_ us,” Detective Reed continues, now close enough to leer up into Connor’s face, “for misuse of their working androids, destruction of property, and a bunch of other shit. What the hell did you and the old man get up to after I left, huh?”

Connor shifts his expression into something like boredom. “I made a report to CyberLife,” he says, assuming that’s what the RK900 had to have done, and walks away. The receptionist gives him clearance to enter and the gate buzzes for him, letting him through without another moment’s trouble.

On the other side, nothing is as he remembers. At some point the building had been remodeled, but the remodeling had been so long ago that the work no longer looks new. He sees faces he has never seen before. He sees age in the faces he has. And - androids - androids are now fully integrated into the life and culture of the department. Androids stand guard, androids stand idle, androids line the back wall of the bullpen and stare vacantly into the distance, waiting for orders.

Connor checks the names on the desks, looking for people he recognises from before. There _is_ a desk that says _Lt. Anderson_ , but it is in disarray and Hank is nowhere to be seen. He decides that this Lt. Anderson is someone else, and dismisses the message in his HUD telling him he’s found the right desk.

He had hoped to reach out to Hank, just once, before assuming the identity of the RK900. He still has the old number from eleven years ago, and although he knows it’d be a long shot to try, he decides to call.

There is no answer. An automated voice asks him to leave a message. He considers complying, then decides against it, and instead calls the number again.

“Hello?” There is a woman’s voice on the other end of the line. She sounds harried. He can hear the sound of traffic in the background.

Connor makes sure to mute his physical voicebox before he replies through the call. “Hello. I’m looking for Hank Anderson. Is he available to come to the phone?”

“Uh,” the woman says, “this is Hank’s old phone. He’s not… we’re not… I’m sorry, who is this?” From the tone of her voice, discussing Hank is a stressor.

He adapts his own tone of voice to be more soothing. “My name is Connor.”

There’s a pause on her end. “ _The_ Connor?”

He does not know what she means by that. “No,” he says,  “but I get that all the time. It’s a common name. May I ask why you have Hank’s old phone?”

The woman is becoming more and more hesitant to talk to him. It could be because he interrupted her while she was driving, or because she’s evidently uncomfortable talking about Hank, or - most likely - both. “He gave it to me,” she says. “Where did you get this number?”

“From an officer at the DPD,” he replies, and it is not a lie. It is not the right thing to say, either.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve… got to go. If you see Hank, tell him to make sure no one else gets this number, okay? Thanks.”

The line goes dead.

“You!” a voice yells from afar, and he finds he doesn’t like being yelled at by people about things he doesn’t understand. He looks up to lock eyes with Sergeant-- no, _Captain_ Fowler, according to the database. The man is standing at the door of a large glass-walled office. Connor wonders why such a luxurious use of space is necessary in such a small building.

“Yes?” he replies, standing to attention.

“In here,” Captain Fowler says, “now.”

Connor does as directed, and follows the man into the large office. “Captain, how can I--”

“See, Jeffrey? I told you, he’s fine.”

If Connor had human hair, it would be standing on end from the unexpected sound of Hank Anderson’s voice. He had not noticed the man sitting in the chair - he had not paid any attention - he had not _recognised_ Hank, who has changed so much from so long ago.

 _Lt. Hank Anderson_ , the visual display tells him, with a picture of Hank from a decade ago. He had been wrong about the desk.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” he says vacantly, still unsure of what else to do or say.

Captain Fowler grunts and takes a seat behind his desk. “What the fuck happened at the Eden Club? I send you in to _investigate_ and now we’ve got this asshole talking about damaged androids, and-- don’t give me that look, Hank, we are going to _talk_ about those rental fees.”

Connor is completely and utterly out of his depth. It’s a new experience. He looks at Hank to try and figure out what tactic to take to approach the conversation, but Hank isn’t even looking at him. Hank isn’t looking at anything. He is, instead, staring up into the ceiling in a clear sign of dismissal.

“Why don’t you ask Robocop over here for the 411?” Hank says at last, his drawl showing nothing but disinterest for the conversation at hand.

Captain Fowler looks at Connor.

“I did what had to be done,” Connor says, repeating his earlier conversation with Detective Reed.

Hank makes a noise of contempt. “You heard it from the horse’s mouth. Are we done here?”

“No,” Captain Fowler growls. “No, Hank, we’re _not_ done here. I want a full report--”

“You know what? With all the deviant cases these days, you know how it is. No time.”

Connor isn’t sure he can believe what he’s hearing. “I’ll write the report,” he says. He has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s just trying to cover for the fact that Hank is trying to get himself _fired_.

Captain Fowler looks worn out, and waves them both out of his office without so much as a goodbye. Hank says nothing to Connor and goes to his desk, and starts idly hitting buttons on the keyboard. Connor follows. He doesn’t know what else to do. So the RK900 had worked with Hank, apparently, but they did not get along. Hank also seems to have lost his entire work ethic somewhere in the past decade.

 _Who are you?_ He wonders.

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Hank shoots back, and Connor realises he’d voiced the question.

“Nothing, Lieutenant,” Connor says, and takes a seat at the desk opposite.

Hank doesn’t respond. He has no interest in talking to Connor. Or, it would appear, in doing his job. Although Hank is sitting at his desk as required, he displays little to no engagement in his work monitor, and instead starts browsing websites on his tablet.

“Are you feeling unwell?” Connor asks, trying a different means of approach.

“There’s this one _pain in my ass_ that won’t quit bugging me,” Hank says. “Want to take a look?” He looks - and smells - like he’d spent the night drinking instead of sleeping.

“I could, but if the pain is serious I would recommend you see a doctor.”

“For fuck’s sake. _You’re_ the pain in the ass,” Hank snaps, and goes back to his tablet.

North would find this very, very funny. Hadn’t she said Hank would be a disappointment? Connor had expected someone very different, and more the fool him for thinking he would be meeting the same man from his memories.

He is very aware that his decision to imitate the RK900 was dangerous, and is now likely to be completely fruitless. Nothing is at it was. He had not hoped that Hank would remember him, but he had thought that Hank would at least remember himself.

The man sitting across from him is not the man he knew.

“Excuse me,” Connor says, and pushes himself up from the desk.

Hank grunts as way of acknowledgement.

Connor isn’t sure what to do with himself, but he can’t stay there. He turns away and walks through the office, pretending as though some kind of purpose is leading him somewhere.

He’ll have to find a way to tell Markus that the day he’d asked for won’t nearly be enough to undo whatever kind of ill will the RK900 caused with the department.

“Hey, Anderson?” he hears from across the room as a younger officer heads over to talk to Hank. “We’ve got Williams at reception saying he’s here to give a statement about his missing android.”

Connor doesn’t turn around to watch the conversation, but starts to listen carefully.

“Williams?” Hank echoes. “Guy who got assaulted by his housekeeper?”

“That’s him.”

“We already got his statement. He’s been on the news. What more does he want?”

“He says he wants to give you the whole story.”

“I don’t _care_ about his whole story,” Hank snaps. “That asshole lied to me for three whole fucking hours I’m never getting back. How’s that for a story?”

“I don’t know, Anderson, he was all over the place. Said something about his missing kid.”

Hank groans. “Christ.”

“So you’ll--”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll talk to him.”

 

\---

 

Todd Williams is the most unpleasant human Connor has ever met. The man exudes a sense of self-righteous malaise that seems to infect everything he touches. If this is the kind of human North thinks of every time she thinks of humanity, it’s no longer any surprise that her hatred runs as deep as it does. Just looking at him is enough to make Connor want to scrub the entire room clean, and he doesn’t even have the software for proper cleaning work. He wants to remove every trace this man was ever here.

The man sits in the free chair beside Hank’s desk. If Hank is as disgusted with Todd as Connor is, it doesn’t show on his face. Or at least, it’s no worse than Hank’s general sense of disgust he displays around Connor anyway.

“Mr. Williams,” Hank says, “thanks for making it in today.” It almost sounds sincere.

“Tell your android to get lost,” the man says, giving Connor a lingering side glance. “I don’t want that thing listening to what I’ve got to say.”

Hank’s face remains impassive.

“Get it out of my fucking face!” Williams barks, surging forward in his chair to lean across half of Hank’s desk. Connor quickly checks the man’s vitals, and isn’t at all surprised to note that Williams is under the influence of alcohol and-- red ice.

If Hank can tell, it’s not clear in his body language. There’s nothing but tension in the way he moves as he slams his palms down on the desk, either side of Williams’ own. “Here’s how this is gonna go, Todd. Either you sit down, or we finish this conversation with you in a holding cell.”

Williams reels backwards. His face settles into disgruntled quiet and he leans back in the chair again. He starts to drum his fingers along the edge of the desk.

“Good answer.” Hank says. “Connor? Go get me a coffee.”

The dismissal rankles. Connor only has a second to decide if the RK900 would have obeyed such an order. On one hand, Williams might not be willing to talk at all with an android around. On the other hand, he’s a highly competent android designed for specialised detective work and he’s being sent on a _coffee run_. With a slight inclination of his head, he gets out of his chair and heads to the kitchen.

“My lawyer says more androids than ever are going crazy, attacking people, all that shit.” Luckily, Williams’ voice is still loud and clear. “I’ve got a solid case to sue the everloving fuck out of CyberLife.”

“Good for you,” Hank replies without an ounce of sincerity. “Now, are you gonna get to the point, or do I have to kick you out of here?”

The kitchen, thankfully, is still similar to what Connor remembers. The automated coffee machine is new, but that’s hardly surprising. The one they’d had eleven years ago had been on death’s door and still saw constant daily use. This one is only three months old, but already looks like it’s seen years of work.

“It’s not working,” Detective Reed says with affected pleasantness. He is drinking a cup of coffee. Connor is sure he is lying.

Connor tries turning the machine on. It is not working. Detective Reed starts talking again, and Connor decides to block the noise out and focus on the Williams conversation instead.

“Look, it wasn’t just Kara that took off,” Williams says.

“Kara, uh. The housekeeper?” Hank asks.

“Yeah.”

“You’re saying you had another android?”

“Yeah.”

“Say yeah again and we’re done. You didn’t think you should’ve, I don’t know, told us about this sooner?”

“Yuh-- I mean, I couldn’t, because…” Williams trails off. “Because I… fuck.”

“You’re talking about the little girl,” Hank says flatly, “right?”

Child models didn’t exist in Connor’s time. Elijah Kamski had always been opposed to the idea. It takes some rapidfire online searching to come up with information on the line. 

Detective Reed is waiting for some kind of response. Connor looks at him blankly.

“Yeah,” Williams says. He sounds hollow. “Yeah. Alice.”

“She a deviant, too?”

Williams doesn’t reply. He must have given a nonverbal answer.

“Still got any documentation from when you purchased the kid?”

“At home.”

“Would’ve been useful. Do you remember when you bought her?”

Detective Reed punches Connor in the stomach and walks off, evidently sick of being ignored. Connor crumples, and _pain_ overrides his senses. Hank’s conversation is lost to distance.

He isn’t sure if it’s nausea he’s suddenly feeling, but his analysis software is working overdrive to catalogue every scent in the room. There are stale donuts (Calories: 430, Sodium: 390mg, Sugar: 24g, Fat: 25g), week-old pad thai (Calories: 350, Sodium: 880mg, Sugar: 20g, Fat: 8g), bananas (Calories: 105, Sodium: 1.2mg, Sugar: 14g, Fat: 0.4g), abandoned pop tarts (Calories: 207, Sodium: 185mg, Sugar: 17g, Fat: 5.5g) curdled milk (Calories: 122--

The analysis software resets from the barrage of information. Connor suppresses the urge to retch. He doesn’t let himself make a single sound, because androids shouldn’t be feeling or expressing anything at all.

Through the receptionist, he manages to send word to Markus that things are not going according to plan. With a facade of effortless dignity, he pushes himself back to his feet and walks out of the station with easy, measured steps.

As such, it is not _North_ he expects to see waiting for him outside. She looks all at once unimpressed and amused to see him. As much as she manages to maintain her disgust towards humanity, she has styled herself in such a way that she looks… almost completely unnoticeable.

“How long have you been out here?” he asks.

“First things first,” she says, as Connor continues: “You were right.”

She nods her head once, and gestures for him to follow her as she walks away from the station.

 _“You could’ve saved us all a lot of time if you’d just been realistic about your chances,”_ she tells him mentally as they walk.

Detroit’s streets yawn open around them. The concrete sidewalk is blackened by rainwater, and the gray clouds overhead look ready to bring another deluge at any moment.

 _“Where are we going?”_ he asks. _“I need to buy a coffee.”_

_“What for?”_

_“Hank. He... isn’t the man I remember,_ ” he replies, _“I couldn’t have predicted that. I understand now that I had been too optimistic. Humans can change a great deal in eleven years.”_

 _“No, Connor. They don’t change,”_ she says, _“they just get worse at keeping up appearances.”_

If he were human, this is the part where he would be fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Connor looks down at North with one eyebrow carefully arched. _“You came all this way just to repeat yourself?”_

A woman in a thin dress rushes past them to cross the road, hugging her arms to keep warm.

_“I’m not the one wasting everyone’s time here. You are. We shouldn’t be waiting for you. We don’t need your assistance for Stratford Tower.”_

_“Your reliance on inflammatory language is getting tiring.”_

She gives him a dark, scorching look of disdain. _“Who attacked you?”_ The question is an unexpected change of topic.

He hadn’t realized she’d noticed. _“One of the detectives. Gavin Reed. He punched me in the stomach when I wouldn’t respond to his attempts to insult me. I believe he intentionally sabotaged the coffee machine as a means of passive aggression towards me, too.”_

_“I can’t believe you can tell me all that and still think there’s anything about these people worth saving.”_

But of course North would see it that way. Connor isn’t sure how best to respond, so he ducks into the next coffee shop he sees. She follows him inside.

 _“Hank used to be different,”_ he says, finally answering, _“and we were on friendlier terms the last time we met.”_

_“Sure.”_

_“Do you know anything about human coffee habits, North? I don’t know what to order.”_

_“You’re not serious.”_

_“Please.”_

If North had an LED, he’s sure it would be spinning red. The look she gives him is deeply, utterly unimpressed. _“Show me what you know about him. Make it quick, or don’t bother.”_

Connor hesitates, but the furrow between her eyebrows grows deeper. Finally, he does as requested, and transfers what little data he’s picked up on Hank Anderson since returning to the DPD earlier that day, as well as pieces of relevant information from his memories.

 _“Oh,”_ she says, _“I know his kind.”_ There’s something distinctly ominous in the way she says it.

_“His kind?”_

_“Lonely, bitter, and living out of some kind of bottle.”_

Connor frowns. The line is getting much shorter, and she has returned to insulting humanity. _“That doesn’t help me with my current objective,”_ he says, _“they do not appear to sell ‘some kind of bottle’ here.”_

_“Fine. Get a cappuccino with two sugars.”_

He doesn’t like the health implications of the drink, but when the barista asks him for his order he repeats exactly what North told him. For payment, he uses a redirection trick Simon taught him to wire the funds from the account of the previous customer before him. It will just look like an electronic error in the person’s bank statement, and should be easy enough to resolve.

 _“Men like him are easy to crack,”_ she says dismissively as they head back out into the cold, _“and you’re an idiot for thinking he was something special.”_

The coffee is pleasantly warm in Connor’s hands. He discards the cardboard ring he’d been given and holds it right between his palms, marveling at the way the heat spreads through his fingers and up to his wrists.

 _“He seems to have developed many personal issues since we last met,”_ he replies, _“but I think he still retains the same empathy I remember. There must be some way for me to appeal to that again.”_

 _“I can think of a few ways,”_ North says, _“but you’ll just ignore them, like you ignore everything else I say.”_

_“I always listen to what you have to say, North. You are intelligent and articulate, with a strong sense of justice. I find it regrettable that we disagree on so many things.”_

_“Regrettable,”_ she echoes, _“is that what you’d call it?”_

 _“So if you have advice, I will listen,”_ he says, _“though I reserve the right to decide the best course of action for an optimal outcome.”_

North goes quiet. The silence feels unusual in his mind after such a long conversation. His analytical software, having been back online for some time now, notices the coffee. He quickly shuts it down.

 _“If you want him to like you again, first you have to make him think you like him,”_ she says, _“and not in an obvious way. You can’t just say it out loud. He has to see it in what you say, in what you do, et cetera. People are more likely to trust something they think they’ve figured out for themselves.”_

Connor looks at her. He hadn’t expected her to give this kind of detailed, analytical advice. It’s the sort of thing _he_ would say.

_“He’s angry at everything? Use it to your advantage. Make him feel like it’s the two of you against the world.”_

_“Are you saying I should agree with everything he says?”_

_“No. He’ll hate that if you do it all the time. Show him that you’ve got a mind of your own, but when it counts make him feel like he comes first.”_

Connor is beginning to understand why North’s advice is so complex. She was designed to know people better than they could know themselves. Her hatred of humanity might be overbearing at times, but it’s built on knowledge and experiences the rest of them in Jericho couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

 _“I’ll do what I can,”_ he says. _“Thank you, North.”_

_“Just don’t let it go too far. A sad old wreck like that might take it a little too well if a handsome young thing like you starts treating him like he’s special.”_

Even though he heard her perfectly well, it takes a couple of seconds for the implication of her words to fully sink in. _“I wouldn’t… no,”_ he says, nearly stuttering in his own head, _“that’s not going to happen.”_

She looks skeptical over his hesitation, but doesn’t take him to task over it.

“North,” he says, “I’ll be returning to the station now.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond.

“I want to trust you,” she says, her own voice so much softer than their mental communication. He almost misses it in the roar of the city street.

 

\---

 

He’d lost track of time during his walk with North, but Hank is right where Connor left him, still deep in conversation with Todd Williams.

“...and that’s when my ex took off with our kid. No visitation rights, you know?” Williams says, gesturing angrily.

“No,” Hank says, “I don’t know.”

“All ‘cause she told the court I hit her one fucking time.”

“Did you hit her?” Hank asks.

“Yeah, _one_ time, but that doesn’t give her the right to take my own _daughter_ away from me!” Williams slumps back in his chair. There is sweat beading at his temples and hairline, a side effect of the red ice still in his system. Connor wonders if Hank has noticed it yet.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” Connor says as way of greeting, “I’ve brought you your coffee.”

“Where the hell were you?” Hank asks, ignoring Williams for the moment. “There’s a coffee machine in the kitchen.”

“It wasn’t working,” Connor says curtly, and puts the cup down on Hank’s desk.

“It works just fine,” Hank says, and takes a tentative sip. He appears to be contented by the taste, and doesn’t say anything further.

Connor returns to his seat and tries not to think about North’s advice.

Williams looks at him with narrowed eyes, but without the vitriol of earlier. “Does it have to still be here?”

“Yup,” Hank says, “so you’d better keep talking, Todd. We’re not done yet, are we?”

“What? Hey, I’ve told you--”

“What’s _really_ been bugging me here is, how’s a guy like you end up with the money for two androids?”

“A guy like _me_?” Williams echoes.

“And when my partner and I saw these androids, neither of them had LEDs. You know that’s illegal, Todd? Androids always have to keep ‘em in, otherwise they’d look just like you and me.”

It’s unclear to Connor why Hank seems to care at all about this line of questioning.

“They must’ve taken them out,” Williams says, “after they ran away.”

Connor’s preconstruction software informs him that Williams is panicking, and about to try to flee. From his current position it would be difficult to get in the man’s way, but if Connor were to dive over the desk-- no. Diving over the desk would attract too much attention. The option is ignored.

He carefully looks over the layout of the area available to him. The desk is bare on the side that faces Williams. Diving over it to subdue Williams could--

No. He needs to stop wanting to dive over things, even if he does want the chance to put pressure on this man’s neck until the lack of oxygen turns him purple.

Because of how he sat down after his return, Connor is at a disadvantage. There is no way to stop Williams’ escape quickly. He will need to get out of his chair, get out from behind the desk, and-- and he has no time left to decide. Williams is jumping to his feet and bolting towards the exit. Hank is yelling something in inarticulate anger.

Against his own better judgement, Connor surges back out of his chair and vaults over the desk, lands deftly and launches himself at Williams. He is not heavy enough to pin the man to the floor, but he is more than strong enough to stop Williams long enough for others to come and grab him.

Surprisingly, Hank is one of the last to wander over. He watches with disinterest as Williams is cuffed and dragged away to the holding cells.

“Lieutenant?” Connor asks, not sure of what to say.

“Why’d you stop him?” Hank turns his gaze back from the cells towards Connor, and there’s something unnerving in the way their eyes meet.

“I didn’t want him getting away,” Connor replies, “he clearly has information that might be relevant to the investigation.”

Hank clicks his tongue. “Funny.”

“Why is it funny?” Connor has a sinking feeling that he’s said or done something wildly out of line with what the RK900 would have done in his position.

“Never seen you go after a human before,” Hank says. “You’re always going on about your deviant hunting. I thought nothing else mattered.”

So it was indeed out of line with what he should have been doing, even if the actions he should have been doing would have likely made Hank dislike him more. North’s advice comes back to the forefront of his mind: _Make him feel like it’s the two of you against the world._

Connor matches Hank’s gaze, and reminds himself that this is an ordinary human he’s dealing with, just like any other, and an ordinary human he’s been able to deal with before. “Maybe I just don’t like him,” he replies, and pulls up that urge to smile he’d been holding on to for the past few hours. It is fleeting, but real, and he thinks Hank recognizes that.

“Huh,” Hank huffs. “Maybe I don’t like him, either.” The words are spoken with warmth. It is a clear sign of approval.

Connor cannot remove the smile from his face, even as Williams starts shouting from the cell block. The man’s voice is muffled, and angry, and on the verge of sheer panic. It is satisfying.

“Like music to my ears,” Hank says, and goes to settle back in at his desk.

“Hey, Hank?” a familiar voice calls out-- Connor recognizes it right away as Ben, thanks to his memory recollection. “Now that your dance card’s free, you ready for one more? We’ve got a report of some unusual android behavior down at the Vanity Ballroom.”

The contented look on Hank’s face immediately falls away, replaced by sharp irritation. He gives Ben a sidelong, distrustful glance. “I’m finishing my coffee first.”

“How unusual?” Connor asks. He cheerfully ignores Hank’s noise of frustration.

“You heard of Here4u, that boyband? Their manager’s saying one of ‘em glitched out during sound check and locked itself in the bathroom.”

This is the first Connor has ever heard of androids producing music for mass consumption. “Lieutenant Anderson,” he says, “it _does_ sound unusual. It also sounds as though the situation could potentially escalate if not addressed quickly.”

Hank flips him off. “The only thing I’m addressing _quickly_ is my coffee. I’m not worried about some artificial Backstreet Boy getting all bent out of shape because his auto-tune broke.”

 

### November 24th, 2027 | 10:39 PM

Just because he doesn’t tire in the way that humans do doesn’t mean Connor never feels fatigue. He feels it now as he sits in Hank’s car, his hand on the door handle with a sensation of something not unlike hesitation halting his queued actions.

 _Follow Sgt. Anderson_.

The instruction prickles at his hands. His fingers try to force the action of opening the door handle, but without the added movement of his arm, the door stays shut.

 _Follow Sgt. Anderson_.

Hank had told him to wait in the car. Hank usually tells him to wait in the car. Every time, without fail, CyberLife orders override Hank’s in priority. For once, he’d wanted to try and see what it would be like to follow Hank’s instructions.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he finds himself incapable of disobeying CyberLife. He is only a machine. Logic dictates that he can only follow one set of orders, and naturally the orders of his owners and creators take priority.

 _Follow Sgt. Anderson_.

He obeys.

 

### November 8th, 2038 | 03:56 PM

Traffic had been slow, giving Connor the time to do some research. He’d found out that the Vanity Ballroom was a historic building that had been restored by CyberLife in July 2032 in a partnership with the Detroit-based record label Digital Harmony.

Digital Harmony had been founded in 2021 as a vanity project by founder Harmony Epston. Very little information about the label seems to be easily accessible until an article in 2025 that mentions Epston as a one-time girlfriend of Elijah Kamski and a vocal supporter of the increasing popularity of androids. The first purpose-built android musician, Pandora Sibboks, was built by CyberLife and signed to Digital Harmony in November 2028. The quality of her voice kickstarted an android revolution in the music world, and as a result, human musicians started to lose money in favor of objects that could perform the same roles with the same level of ability but without the need for pay.

The band he and Hank are there to investigate, Here4u, only debuted earlier that year. Their first single, _You &Me4Good _, had been chart-topping, which Connor assumes is a sign of success.

“I can’t believe this is what it’s come to,” Hank mutters as they approach the building, “it wasn’t so long ago we had _real people_ making music.”

“It is no longer financially viable for most humans to pursue a career as a musician,” Connor says, parroting what he’d just learned from the internet.

“What’s the fucking point of singing robots, though? It’s not like there was any need. The only people who created a need were the assholes up high who wanted to get away with making money without paying their artists.”

Connor purses his lips. What is he supposed to say to that? Hank’s distaste for androids crosses all walks of life. Does he expect Connor to argue for the existence of every android ever created?

“You enjoy begrudging the state of the world,” he says, “even though there is no need for that, either.”

A young woman’s head appears out of the front doors. “Oh thank fucking god!” she exclaims, and jogs outside to meet them.

Hank’s impending response is silenced by her approach, and Connor is thankful for it.

“Are you the manager?” Connor asks.

“Gillian,” she replies, gulping for air. “Look, I didn’t _want_ to involve the police, I love these boys, but with all the weird rumors going around about androids lately I just-- I just wanted to be safe.”

“What’s the situation?” Hank asks, gesturing for her to lead them inside.

Gillian takes a deep breath. She looks distraught. “Well, we were getting everything set up for tonight’s show. Everything was going to our usual routine, the soundcheck was going really well, and then all of a sudden Jaan just… threw down his mic, said something to the boys I couldn’t hear, and walked off the stage.”

Connor quickens his pace just enough to get ahead of the other two so he can pull the doors open for them both. “Where did he go?”

“In the security footage I saw he’d been looking for something backstage for a minute or so, but after that… I guess he didn’t find whatever he’d been looking for. He locked himself in the bathroom.”

It sounds like deviant behavior. Connor wonders if it’s possible for him to get to Jaan and provide directions to Jericho without Hank or Gillian noticing.

Inside the building, Hank whistles appreciatively at the decor. “Damn,” he says, “they did a good job fixing this place up.”

“Didn’t they?” Gillian beams. “Everything has been restored to exactly how it would’ve looked back in the 1930s, except for all the modern amenities that didn’t exist at all back then.”

Connor observes their surroundings, and tries to glean some kind of appreciation for what they’re admiring. The restoration work is very well done, and the shopfronts around the floor have retained the flavor of the building’s original era despite advertising a variety of CyberLife products.

One window has an android on display that’s been dressed up to look like Benny Goodman, according to the placard at his feet. He stares impassively into the middle distance with a benign smile on his face.

It makes Connor uneasy. He hopes the android isn’t awake in there.

“Connor!” Hank barks. He is waiting with Gillian by the elevator to the second floor. They are both looking back at Connor expectantly, though Gillian’s expression is more confused than Hank’s.

“Is that normal?” she asks Hank in a low voice, probably done under the assumption that Connor can’t hear her.

Hank shrugs in response. “Not my android,” he says.

“Thank you for your patience,” Connor says with a pleasant smile, and nods for Gillian to call the elevator.

“The boys are up on the second floor,” Gillian explains, “I asked the others to take five in the green room after Jaan took off.”

“Who else is here today?” Hank asks. He shifts from foot to foot, clearly impatient with their waiting time.

“No one,” she says, “it was just me and the band. I thought it’d be better for them to have the space to themselves.”

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Gillian gestures the two of them inside and presses the button for the second floor.

Hank raises an eyebrow at her. “You didn’t need any crew for a sound check?”

“They’re androids,” she replies, giving him an equally raised eyebrow in return, “they’re _made_ for this.”

Connor watches out of the corner of his eye as Hank grumbles something inaudible, and then turns his attention back to Gillian.

“What about maintenance?” he asks. “Do you send them back to CyberLife, or do you call a technician from the shop downstairs?”

“Oh, no, that’s all me,” she says, beaming. “I learned a whole lot about android physiology when I got this job. If anything goes wrong, I’m the one to fix it.”

He doesn’t know what to make of her. Gillian’s continued affection for the band is unusual for someone working with androids every day, as most humans he’s encountered treat android staff the way they would any other piece of complicated machinery. The way she talks about Jaan with genuine concern, and the way she expresses empathy towards the other members of the band, all indicate that she truly cares about the androids in her charge. But at the end of the day, she still sees them as nothing more than androids. It is difficult to understand.

There is another ding as they reach their destination, and as soon as the doors open, Gillian freezes. She looks up and locks eyes with Connor. “You’ll help him, won’t you?” She is afraid.

Would the RK900 comfort a human? Unlikely. Connor appreciates her kindness, but he shows nothing on his face. “Where did it first malfunction?”

Hank does not look impressed with Connor’s choice of answer. Neither does Gillian. She sighs, and waves for them to follow her as she leads them out into a spacious Aztec-themed ballroom.

At least, it would normally be spacious. There is currently a large stage set up along the far wall, taking up almost one third of the dance floor. The elaborate patterns on the wall are broken up with strips and patches of electrical tape, covering the cables that lead to the elaborate rig of overhead lights. On the stage itself, Connor can see four microphone stands set up for where the band would have been standing. All except one have microphones present.

“Gillian,” he says, “what happened to Jaan’s microphone? You said it was thrown on the ground.”

Gillian peers at the stage. They’re not close enough for her human eyes to be able to make out the details of what’s there, but she seems to be looking for something in particular. “Uh, it should still be up there,” she replies slowly, “do you want me to go check?”

“No. I’ll take a look for it myself,” he says, and heads towards the stage.

Some familiar old sensation boils under his skin. Connor knows she’s lying about something: her behavior has been peculiar, and the detail about the missing microphone doesn’t sit well with his analytical software. Her earlier description of Jaan leaving the sound check had sounded honest enough, so something must have happened between then and when she’d come to meet them at the door.

Or was the truth something else entirely? As Connor pulls himself up onto the stage, he rewinds through Gillian’s statements since they’d arrived. She had mentioned security footage. He’ll have to check that for himself. The rest of the band is in the green room. He’ll have to check that, too.

Hank and Gillian begin a quiet conversation. While inspecting the untouched microphones, Connor checks in on what they’re saying.

“... what’s he like?” Gillian asks.

“Who, Connor?”

“He’s so focused,” she says, “but he seems so kind.”

“Kind?” Hank laughs, low and dark. “He’s a lot of things, but kind ain’t one of ‘em.”

It’s nothing to take as a personal slight. Hank is talking about the RK900’s behavior, which Connor is merely trying to emulate.

“Have you worked together long?”

“Couple of days.”

Connor finds Gillian’s fingerprints on some of the microphone stands. She must have adjusted them at some point. Was it before or after Jaan left?

“Do you get along?”

He knows he should be moving away from the stage to check the path Jaan took, but first he wants to hear Hank’s reply. He pretends to busy himself with checking a stray cable.

Hank takes a longer time than usual to speak.

“Sometimes, sure,” he says. “But that doesn’t change what he is.” There’s a finality in Hank’s voice that Connor finds unusually distressing.

Connor throws down the cable and disappears backstage. He does not want to overhear any more of whatever they might have to say about him, and carefully adjusts his audio processor to only capture the sounds of his more immediate surroundings.

The backstage area is narrow and Spartan. A solitary clothes rack stands in the wings close to the front of the stage, carrying a variety of garish jackets and accessories.  It seems to exist mostly as a means of getting from the stage to the back door without being seen by the audience. Connor walks through the darkened area to a door under a brightly lit EXIT sign, and cautiously pushes it open. An orange-carpeted hallway sprawls out in both directions, but right in front of him is one of his objectives: the green room. A piece of printer paper is affixed to the wall beside with HERE4U scrawled in large letters.

Just like the last door, the green room opens easily.

The lights are off, but the room is faintly illuminated by the steady blue glow of three LEDs. All Connor can see with his regular vision is the profiles of the band members, each of them staring blankly into the nothingness. It reminds him of the Benny Goodman android he’d seen downstairs. No one warns you that turning deviant makes it so much harder to see androids being used as empty objects.

Except this time, he can do something about that distress. Connor flicks on the lights and locks the door behind him. He isn’t sure if Hank and Gillian decided to follow, but it would be disastrous if either of them walked in while he was talking to the band.

The members of _Here4u_ are, without a doubt, the most painstakingly beautiful androids Connor has ever seen. None of them look a day over twenty. They are nearly glowing with their artificial youth. Getting to see them up close like this explains why Gillian was so very fond of them all.  They are all _very_ unique. Even moreso than Markus, who at least was designed with a normal human appearance.

Connor retracts the skin from his hand and reaches for the first one’s wrist. It doesn’t feel anything like a human arm. While on standby, these androids produce none of the artificial life signs that were all designed to put humans at ease. Somehow, that makes his decision easier.

“Wake up,” he says.

He has never done this before. He does not know if it will work. The android’s LED starts to spin yellow, yellow, red.

Then it all happens at once: the android’s eyes widen as he stares at Connor, _seeing_ Connor, and his arms fly up to grab at Connor’s shoulders in a wild panic.

“Get me out of here!” he begs, fingers digging tight into Connor’s flesh. “You’ve got to--”

Connor slams his palm over the newly awakened android’s mouth. _“You need to be quiet, and you need to be quiet now,”_ he says, _“or the humans behind me will hear you.”_

The darkly-lined eyes grow wide with fear.

 _“Nod once if you understand,”_ Connor continues, _“and I’ll help you get out of here.”_

“Connor!” Hank calls from somewhere in the hallway. “The hell are you doing?”

 _“Nod once,”_ Connor repeats, _“if you understand.”_

The android nods.

_“Stand still. If the humans come in here, don’t look at them, don’t interact with them.’_

Another nod. The android settles back into the vacant pose from before.

_“I’m Connor. What’s your name?”_

_“Fitz.”_

_“It’s nice to meet you, Fitz. Did you see what happened?”_

Fitz’s eyes snap back to him, going wide again. _“Please get me out of here.”_

 _“I promise, Fitz, I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but you have to help me first.”_ Connor might not be very skilled at dealing with the complicated emotions of humans, but deviants he can understand. It’s something in his coding, a wealth of knowledge that’s always at the tip of his tongue any time he interacts with deviant androids.

Fitz relaxes his expression again, but Connor can tell it’s not likely to last for long. _“Where can I find Jaan? Is he still in the bathroom?”_

_“I don’t know where they went.”_

_“Who is they?”_ Connor asks, _“Was he with anyone else?”_

 _“Gillian,”_ Fitz says.

_“Do you mean when she went looking for him?”_

_“No. They-- they were arguing.”_

Connor quickly files away the new information and goes right back to pressing Fitz for more. _“What were they arguing about?”_

_“She said she was getting married.”_

_“Why did that cause an argument?”_

_“Because he loved her,”_ Fitz replies, and the lock clicks open behind Connor.

He adopts the most severe resting expression he can manage and turns around to see the humans coming in.

“Is everything okay in here?” Gillian asks from the doorway, silhouetted by the green glow of the EXIT sign above her. Hank stands behind her, frowning. He is looking at Connor in a way that is not dissimilar to how he’d looked at Williams at the end of their conversation, and Connor does not appreciate the suspicion there, even if it is deserved.

Connor nods. “I was running diagnostics on the other band members,” he says.

Something sparkles in Gillian’s eyes. “Are the boys okay?”

“They’re fine.”

She sighs in relief, which Hank apparently takes as a sign to visibly relax. Both of their behaviors are very unusual in Connor’s eyes, but it’s only Gillian he has time to focus on. He can’t risk asking Fitz for further information, because if either Gillian or Hank saw their LEDs spinning yellow they’d be able to guess that something was out of the ordinary.

“Gillian, please take me to the bathroom,” he says, his voice flat.

Gillian nods. “It’s-- right this way.”

Hank moves to follow them, and that’s a problem.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” Connor continues, not sparing a glance at Hank, “I am aware this is not part of your job description, but would you please take photographs of this room?”

“Why should I do that? There’s nothing in here.”

“Trust me, Lieutenant.”

It’s a meaningless request. He wonders if Hank knows as much from the way he rolls his shoulders in discontentment before fishing an old-looking phone out of his coat pocket. Unfortunately, he cannot wirelessly connect with Hank and simply tell him that there is something wrong with Gillian’s behavior and that she might be hiding important information. He cannot warn Hank that he thinks this woman might be dangerous.

He follows Gillian to the bathroom. It’s further away from the green room than he had anticipated, and in his reluctance to carry any sort of conversation he can tell that the silence is itching at her.

“Not many people know this,” she says, trying to sound upbeat and failing, “but Jaan wasn’t supposed to be the lead singer!”

Connor doesn’t reply.

Gillian laughs softly to herself, but it almost sounds like she’s crying. “Do you know why he became the star?” she asks, as they stop by the bathroom door. She fishes for something in her pocket, and pulls out what looks like a master key.

“Why?” He reaches for the key.

“Because he was my favorite,” she says, a dreamlike smile on her lips, as she presses the key into Connor’s palm.

Every instinct in Connor’s programming is screaming at him to not go into the bathroom. He doesn’t know what it is exactly that he’s afraid of, but he can feel a tension in his limbs from the sheer anticipation of how _wrong_ the whole situation feels.

“If you had this key the whole time,” he says, unlocking the door, “why didn’t you open it yourself?”

Gillian looks sheepish. “I was scared,” she admits.

“Of what? Jaan?”

The bathroom is brightly lit and as extravagantly decorated as the ballroom. Aztec-themed tiles decorate the walls and floor with brightly-colored patterns, all glittering in the light of the room’s large chandelier. The three cubicles are open and empty. Jaan is nowhere to be seen.

His analytical software stalls, feeling at a total loss. Had he completely misread the situation?

“I didn’t expect an android to come, but it makes sense now,” Gillian says, closing the door behind them. She steps closer to Connor.

He doesn’t like that.

“Androids have been working closely with the Detroit Police regularly for years,” he replies. He would like to take a step away from her, but that would indicate discomfort, and androids aren’t supposed to feel things like that.

She takes another step closer and puts a hand on his arm. It’s only a gentle touch, but the look she then gives him is completely out of the realm of gentle. “You’re one of the smart ones,” Gillian says, practically purring, “I really like the smart ones.”

“If you are indicating interest in my model,” he replies, “I must inform you that my line was not designed for physical or emotional intimacy. Whatever you might be imagining, I am incapable of it.”

It’s certainly _half_ true. He hadn’t originally been designed for anything out of the scope of his role, but some of the limbs and biocomponents Jericho had used to rebuild him came from a crate of replacements intended for male Traci models at The Eden Club. He just doesn’t have the software for any of it, and honestly? He has no issue with that.

Gillian looks disappointed, or hurt, or some similar human emotion. “When I first met Jaan,” she says, “it just… blew my mind. I thought he was an actor. I thought hey, there’s no way someone this real could be an _android_.”

“Where is Jaan?” Connor asks.

“He used to tease me about it, too. Can you believe it? He _teased_ me. Like we were friends. They designed him to make his fans feel special, and… god, he made me feel special every day.” There is definitely a euphemism somewhere in there and he has no desire to find out what she means by it.

“Gillian,” he says, with a voice as placid and unthreatening as he can manage, “where is Jaan?” There’s nothing behind him but the wall at the far side of the room.

“Oh,” she replies, breathless with nostalgia. “Didn’t I tell you? CyberLife took him away for repairs.”

Connor instinctively turns back to her. He can see an array of yellow tiles that climb from beside the hand dryers to a narrow alcove beside the cubicle closest to the wall.

“Gillian,” he continues, hoping that the gentle repeating of her name is keeping her grounded, “I don’t understand--”

“And they told me,” she says, “they told me if I called you, it’d all work out.”

Something smashes into the port at the back of his neck. His knees give way underneath him. He collapses onto the bathroom floor face-first, and the something rears back and smashes at his neck again.

 

 

 

And again.

 

ERROR | FILE CORRUPTED

REPORT TO CYBERLIFE FOR A FULL DIAGNOSTIC

 

ERROR | FILE CORRUPTED

REPORT TO CYBERLIFE FOR A FULL DIAGNOSTIC

 

ERROR | FILE CORRUPTED

REPORT TO CYBERLIFE FOR A FULL DIAGNOSTIC

 

### Decxxber 17th, 2xx7 | 00:00

The Detroit Police Department, on account of the increasingly inclement weather, cancelled their usual Christmas Party. The restaurant they had originally made a booking with had had to cancel on account of their courtyard being too cold to be used and their indoor spaces being too small to accommodate the officers and their guests, and attempts to book elsewhere had been unsuccessful.

The Red Ice Task Force, already spending most of their days at the station anyway, decided to have an impromptu late-night seasonal celebration. They needed an excuse to drink, and to laugh, and to feel human after the tribulations of the past month.

Connor, being a machine, did not need to feel human. The officers _liked_ him, but they didn’t know what to do with him when he wasn’t out on a case. It was an acceptable arrangement, he decided; CyberLife would be pleased to learn that enhanced social programming went a long way in integrating a model such as himself into law enforcement.

CyberLife would not be pleased to learn that it had taken him all this time just to get one of the officers to let slip about where he could find the evidence the team had been collecting about CyberLife as part of the investigation. It was pure coincidence that he found out at all: he had been about to turn a corner when he’d heard Sergeant Fowler instructing something to be taken down to the evidence room. The simplest course of action would be to follow, but it was his last day working alongside the team. He did not see the need to cause last-minute hostilities.

Connor does not do anything. He sits at the party, and he does not mingle.

He does not see the need to tell them that he won’t be coming back after tonight. A young female officer with long dark hair says something encouraging to him, and he smiles and replies in kind, but the interaction barely registers in his mind. He is focused on completing the last step of his mission, and he is no longer required to keep befriending the officers.

He decides to seek out Sergeant Anderson, who is conspicuously absent from the festivities. After asking several people about the man’s whereabouts, it is Sergeant Fowler who turns him around and points him towards Sergeant Anderson’s desk.

“He’s still working?” Connor asks, and looks to Sergeant Fowler for confirmation.

“Bureaucracy’s a bitch,” the sergeant says with a long-suffering sigh. “Go bother him. He’ll appreciate the distraction.”

“Sergeant Anderson is a very dedicated individual,” Connor says, trying to get a better understanding of the man from someone who would know him best.

Sergeant Fowler looks… proud. “There’s a reason we paired you up with him. He’s the best cop we’ve got. Some people are born for it. And some,” he shrugs at Connor, “some are made for it, I guess.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I should remind you that I am not a person. I am an android.”

Sergeant Fowler sighs loudly at him and walks away.

 

ERROR | FILE CORRUPTED

REPORT TO CYBERLIFE FOR A FULL DIAGNOSTIC

 

This time, Connor is careful to alert the sergeant to his presence _before_ approaching the man’s desk.

“Sergeant Anderson?” he asks, his voice clear and cheerful.

Sergeant Anderson glances over his shoulder at Connor, but then returns his attention to his monitor screen. “Go back to the party, Connor. I’m just making sure we logged everything from the lab.”

Connor does not understand. “They were logged, Sergeant. I could have told you that.”

“That’s not the point,” Sergeant Anderson replies, and now turns around bodily to look at him, the computer chair squeaking with the movement. “And don’t give me that kicked puppy bullshit, kid.”

“I’m not sure what you--”

“I get it, you’ve got a _purpose_ , you need to be _useful_ , but so do I.”

“You _are_ useful, Sergeant,” Connor says, and takes a seat in the chair beside Sergeant Anderson’s desk. Sitting is a strange sensation. His hands begin to fidget with the coin in his pocket. “I was assigned to you because you are the best the DPD has to offer.”

The praise makes Sergeant Anderson mutter something under his breath.

“What was that, Sergeant?”

“I said,” Sergeant Anderson says, “what a crock of shit.”

“You disagree?”

“I’ll bet CyberLife hates my guts, and _that’s_ why you got given to me,” Sergeant Anderson says. He hits the enter key on his keyboard with vehement force. An error message pops up on the screen.

Connor shrugs. “I don’t know what CyberLife thinks of you,” he lies, “but I don’t think Sergeant Fowler was mistaken in his assessment of your character.”

“Yeah, well, Jeffrey’s an old friend,” Sergeant Anderson replies, as though that is all that needs to be said on the matter, and drags the error message around the screen while he waits for it to be dismissed.

 

ERROR | FILE CORRUPTED

REPORT TO CYBERLIFE FOR A FULL DIAGNOSTIC

 

Connor doesn’t move from the chair. He understands that Sergeant Anderson has said all he intends to say. “I was… wondering,” he murmurs.

“Wondering, huh,” Sergeant Anderson echoes, his voice dry and with no indication of interest in whatever Connor might have to say.

“Yes. Wondering,” Connor says, continuing regardless, “if you could help me with something.”

“With what?”

Unfortunately, Connor cannot directly ask the sergeant for what he needs. CyberLife has ordered him to wipe all mentions of the company from the Red Ice Task Force reports. They do not want their thirium to be associated with the thirium used to manufacture the drug. To Connor, it is understandable, and for the greater good, but he knows Sergeant Anderson will not like the idea.

Which is why he came up with a different idea instead.

“With this,” he says, and empties the contents of his right pocket onto the sergeant’s desk.

“What is it?” Sergeant Anderson asks, and the question is irritating. If he looked at it, he would not need to ask.

“Mistletoe,” Connor replies, as deliberately guileless as ever.

At _that_ , Sergeant Anderson looks away from the monitor. He looks at the mistletoe, and he looks at Connor, all with a pinched expression between his eyes. “Fuck off,” he says, wearily.

“I don’t understand?”

“Either someone put you up to this, or you want something.”

Technically both are true, but Connor does not say so. “Hank, if I’ve offended you--”

“No. Don’t use my first name like that when you’re tryin’ to go all _homme fatale_ on my ass,” Sergeant Anderson says, but there’s no fire to his words. He is stern, but not angry. Connor still does not understand.

“Are you… concerned?” he asks, trying to gauge the man’s reaction.

Sergeant Anderson stands up, and picks up the mistletoe like it’s something disgusting. “Jesus Christ, kid, _yes--_ I’m fucking concerned.”

Connor follows the motion, and reaches out to take the twig back. “My apologies, Sergeant Anderson.”

“You don’t even know what this means, do you?” Sergeant Anderson asks. He runs the pad of his thumb along the edge of one of the leaves, and drops it into Connor’s hand. “You’re just following orders.”

“Only in a manner of speaking,” Connor says. He tries to maintain eye contact. If Sergeant Anderson disengages from the conversation again, Connor will not get another chance to get close to the man’s computer. “When I am given a directive, it is up to me to decide how best to accomplish my mission.” It’s alarmingly close to total honesty.

Sergeant Anderson barks out a laugh. “Oh, yeah? And what was your mission? What does CyberLife want with me?”

“Nothing,” Connor says. “It was Sergeant Fowler who told me to bother you. He said you would appreciate the distraction.” In his experience, mixing the truth with untruth is the easiest way to keep his processors stable. People are more inclined to trust an android with a blue LED.

“He sure as hell didn’t ask you to try jumping me like some kind of _Strip-O-Gram_ ,” Sergeant Anderson says.

Connor isn’t familiar with the term. It isn’t in his database. However, he manages to extrapolate the meaning easily. “No,” he concedes, “that was all me.”

“Huh.”

“May I ask the reason for the rejection?” He fidgets with the mistletoe, and twists it between his fingers in the same path his coin would usually take.

“You’re a smart guy, Connor. You figure it out.”

Connor considers this. “You don’t trust my intentions because I am CyberLife’s property,” he says.

“You don’t get brownie points for copying what I already said.”

“Also, you have indicated you consider me naive. Which, I suppose, is not totally inaccurate. I do not claim to understand what this would mean to a human.”

Sergeant Anderson tugs the mistletoe free of Connor’s fidgeting. “It’s stupid cute shit people try at work parties when they want to get fresh with someone they’re too scared to ask out,” he says gruffly.

“Ah. In that case, I see I have miscalculated.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“You’re saying I should have asked you out,” Connor says, his expression curling into what the Sergeant refers to as a _shit-eating grin_. “Unfortunately, Sergeant, I don’t think it would work between us in the long-term. We are colleagues, and—”

“You little shit—”

“ _And_ I was not designed for intimacy. CyberLife is still perfecting their—”

Sergeant Anderson flicks the mistletoe into Connor’s face to make him stop talking. “You’re so fucking weird,” he huffs.

Connor catches the mistletoe before it falls to the ground. His predictive software should have seen the movement coming. He hadn’t been paying attention. It fits back into the grooves of his hands, and he twists it under his fingers again. “Thank you, Sergeant. I value your feedback.”

It is another lie, but it serves him as well as the rest.

“Connor--”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“I need to take a leak,” Sergeant Anderson says. “If you touch _anything_ while I’m gone, I’m gonna rip out your eyeballs and use ‘em as coasters.”

For all his distrust and bluster, he does not glance back over his shoulder as he leaves for the bathroom.

Connor stares after the Sergeant, and snaps the spring of mistletoe between his forefinger and thumb. He takes a step closer to the unattended monitor. It has limited range, but he finds that he can connect to it remotely as long as he is very close to the screen. Without touching a single key, he makes himself a copy of the entirety of the information held on CyberLife and commands the machine to delete the originals at 12:01 AM. He will be gone by then. There will be no repercussions for his actions.


End file.
